FEMALE Think Tank
Research Projects
Our research projects represent the first pillar of our foundation. Here we create awareness and untackle the key conditions. With this we bring our values, our mission and our approach to live.
General conditions for business start-ups by women in Switzerland
German: Rahmenbedingungen für Unternehmensgründungen durch Frauen in der Schweiz
Together with Bern University of Applied Science we have been brainstorming and forming the idea and framework of this thesis. Bern University of Applied Science has been working the last months to produce this research paper and provide us valuable insights into the general conditions of starting a business as a women in Switzerland.
Now with the thesis soon being ready to be published, we are very happy to be the communcitation partner of this thesis.
Our aim is to create awareness, spread the findings and pick-up relevant topics to create change.
Research question
What does it take to improve the conditions that encourage and support entrepreneurial activities of women?
Timeline
Mai 2022
Annual Monitor on Female Enterpreneurship
Our second project will take a comparison of the whole entrepreneurial activities in Switzerland with an emphasize on comparing the market data to female led companies.
Research question
How does the female enterpreneurship ecosystem develops in comparison with the whole entrepreneurial market in Switzerland?
Timeline
Planned Q4 2022
Please get in touch here if you are interested in joining us as a Partner or Sponsor.
Innova Market Trends
Innova Market Trends represent the first and second pillar of our foundation. Here we create awareness to shine a light to researchs and publications that have been published. With the discovered findings we market the key recommendations to indtroduce and implement change.
We give voice to Bachelor/Master Thesis and Ph.D. professionals that have been researching on topics around females in entrepreneurship.
How female founders evaluate their minority status according to their social identity
Marlies Edlinger
University of St. Gallen
It’s a shocking fact but only 9% of (Co-)Founders in Switzerland are female!
The good thing is – we can change it! Marlies research paper about ‘How female founders evaluate their minority status according to their social identity’ brought up some interesting theses and insights.

Female Founders in Switzerland – Pathways to change
Léonie Wüthrich
Zurich University of Applied Science
While enterpreneurship is a form of business that is increasingly rapidly, not everyone is profiting from the development. There are significant gender discrepancies globally when it comes to business founders. Switzerland catagorized as a well-developed country with a gender equal environment faces that as well.
The perecntage of female founders comapred to male founders is low.
Watch in our talk with Léonie what we can do to change this!

“We ask men to win and women not to lose, closing the gender gap in the start-up funding”
Interview Partner: Dana Kanze
Authors: Dana Kanze, Huang Ching-Hsin (Laura), Mark A. Conley and Tory Higgins
Academy of Management Journal
The paper brought up some super interesting theses and insights. There is a bias in questions of investors that leads to significant differences in the $$$ start-ups raise, depending on if the questions are more promotion- or prevention-oriented. And now guess what: YES, it’s also significantly more likely that female entrepreneurs get prevention-oriented questions when they’re in pitch situations.
But those are only a few interesting facts so please listen to the full audio interview with Dana Kanze below.