evidence from the united states suggests that achieving better worklife balance was an important reason for starting a business for of the female entrepreneurs in the smallest revenue class but for only of those in the largest revenue class rsm mcgladrey the relatively high rates of women entrepreneurship in emerging and developing countries are primarily due to high levels of necessity entrepreneurship figure shows that more women than men start their business in the informal sector out of economic necessity especially in egypt and mexico however no significant correlation exists across countries between women s educational attainment and their entrepreneurial activity as measured by the proportion of women among the selfemployed this suggests that it is not the level but rather the type of education that matters in female entrepreneurship women are significantly underrepresented in engineering and computing chapter two fields of study that build the knowledge useful for starting a technologyoriented business