CLOSING the ‘enterprise’ gender gap in Worcestershire will create thousands of jobs and add billions of pounds to the regional economy, it has been claimed.

The rallying cry, made by the Advantage West Midlands-backed Women’s Enterprise Centre of Expertise (Wecoe), comes on the back of two new reports which reveal that gender matters more in the West Midlands than in any other part of the UK and that men are twice as likely as women to start new businesses.

More than 250 delegates at a conference in Birmingham also heard that bringing in an ‘escalator of business support’ from start-up through to established businesses could create 36,000 more businesses run by women each year and generate an additional £2.32billion for the economy.

The Economic Case for Women’s Enterprise conference – entitled Does Gender Matter? – was the biggest of its type ever held in the West Midlands. It received the backing of high profile keynote speakers, including Rosie Winterton (Minister for Regional Economic Development), Theresa May (shadow Minister for Women), Everyclick.com’s Polly Gowers and American business guru Julie Weeks.

Marla Nelson, director of WECOE said: “Closing the gender gap has never been more important for the Worcestershire and is commonly perceived as one of the main ways we can look to close the output gap.

“For the last two years, we have been working towards developing the women’s enterprise agenda by gathering market intelligence, engaging with partners and stakeholders, capacity building and piloting new activities that could shape policy going forward.

“The event is also the perfect opportunity to officially launch two latest research papers on the current landscape concerning women’s enterprise.”

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitoring team at Aston University, revealed only 3.9 per cent of females in the region are involved in starting up a business compared to 8.9 per cent of men.