TEHRAN –According to Zahra Behrouz-Azar, the Vice President for Women and Family Affairs, women account for more than 24 percent of inventions in the country, compared to the global average of 17 percent.

“Unfortunately, only 12 percent of entrepreneurship and start-ups are founded by women. We hope that women’s presence in entrepreneurship reaches 30 percent by the end of the current administration,” Behrouz-Azar noted.

She made the remarks at the first national women’s entrepreneurship and business conference that was held on Monday at Tehran’s Tarbiat Modarres University. 

The official went on to say that in Iran, entrepreneurship officially commenced in 2000. Following that it was defined as a field of study in universities, and the first entrepreneurial major as an interdisciplinary one launched at University of Tehran.

Today, the concept of entrepreneurship is interwoven with various fields such as economy, psychology, culture, sociology, and even religion. 

With the conceptual development of entrepreneurial thought, women's entrepreneurship begins to grow because there is a difference between men and women in terms of performance, motivation, and access to resources.

One of the most important differences between entrepreneurship among women and men is the issue of motivation.

Men’s motivation in entrepreneurship is more concerned with earning a living and increasing wealth, but women all over the world tend to use it to strengthen the family foundation.

The most important goal in women’s entrepreneurship in the current administration is to promote motivation.

Men entrepreneurs can more easily provide resources and capital for their businesses, but this happens less for women. 

Therefore, educated women face funding problems to start off their business.

The government is well aware of the issue and is looking for solutions to boost access to finance for women entrepreneurs, Behrouz-azar highlighted.

Iran secures position in GII for second consecutive year

According to the 2024 edition of the Global Innovation Index (GII) report, the Islamic Republic of Iran ranks second among the countries of the Central and Southern Asian region, unchanged compared with the last two years.

India and Kazakhstan ranked first and third, respectively. According to this year’s report, Iran ranks 5th among the 38 lower-middle-income group economies, which has improved compared to the 2023 ranking, 6th.

However, the country’s ranking, among the 133 economies featured in the GII 2024,  has dropped from 62 in 2023 to 64th this year.

Switzerland secured the first rank in the GII 2024 report with a score of 67.5 for the 14th consecutive year, closely followed by Sweden and the US at the second and third positions with scores of 64.5 and 62.4, respectively.

As stated in the 2024 edition, over the past four years (2020-2024), the statistical confidence interval for the ranking of Iran in the GII 2024 is between ranks 56 and 80.

Iran performs better in innovation outputs (48th) than in innovation inputs (85th) in 2024.

Published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the report ranks Iran first in Market capitalization, and Trademarks by origin.

It ranks 3rd, 5th, 8th, 17th, 19th, 23rd, and 35th in Software spending, Gross capital formation, Graduates in science and engineering, market sophistication, Domestic market scale, Intangible asset intensity, and Tertiary education, respectively.

Iran (Islamic Republic of) ranks highest in Market sophistication (17th), Knowledge and technology outputs (49th), Creative outputs (52nd), and Human capital and research (64th).

The country ranks lowest in Institutions (133rd), Business sophistication (110th), and Infrastructure (95th).

The GII has ranked Tehran as the world’s 38th–largest science and technology (S&T) cluster this year, down from 35th last year, according to a report released on Tuesday by the UN’s WIPO.

The Global Innovation Index ranks the world’s leading economies according to their innovation capabilities.

A common thread among top-performing nations is the presence of thriving science and technology (S&T) clusters. 

Since 2016, the GII has employed a bottom-up approach to identifying such clusters. This methodology disregards administrative or political borders and instead pinpoints those geographical areas with a high density of inventors and scientific authors.

MT/MG