Measuring women’s entrepreneurial activity is critically important for a better understanding of how female entrepreneurs contribute to the economy and society. The lack of comprehensive sex-disaggregated data on business entry and ownership presents a significant obstacle to the global and diversified analysis of female entrepreneurship. Due to insufficient standardized and country-comparable data, the diagnostics of gender gaps in entrepreneurship are limited.
In here, to measure female entrepreneurial activity, annual data is collected directly from 73 company registrars on the number of female/male business owners of LLCs, female/ male sole proprietors and female/ male directors of LLCs, over the past four years.

The importance of female entrepreneurship for economic development is widely recognized. Numerous studies demonstrate the positive impact of female entrepreneurs on economic growth and development, as well as sustainable and durable peace. Moreover, economies characterized by high levels of female entrepreneurial activity are more resilient to financial crises and experience economic slowdowns less frequently. Despite different methodologies, these studies find significant socioeconomic benefits of female entrepreneurship.
Number of female sole proprietors
The definition of entrepreneurship used is limited to the formal sector. Yet, it should be noted that the exclusion of the informal sector is based on the difficulties of quantifying the number of firms that compose it, rather than on its relevance for developing economies. The Entrepreneurship Database facilitates the analysis of the growth of the formal private sector and the identification of factors that encourage firms to begin operations in or transition to the formal sector. Data is collected on sole proprietorship. Data on the number of total or closed sole proprietorships are not included.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   The data itself only provides a snapshot of a given economy's business demographics, and cannot by itself explain the factors that affect the business creation cycle. However, when the Entrepreneurship Database is combined with other data such as the Doing Business Report, Investment Climate Assessments, and/or OECD Entrepreneurship Indicators, researchers and policymakers can better understand the dynamics of the business creation process.
Number of female sole proprietors is the number of newly registered sole proprietors owned by female individuals in the calendar year. A sole proprietorship is a business entity owned and managed by a single individual who is indistinguishable from the business and personally liable.
Data are collected by the World Bank Group’s Entrepreneurship Database.  To facilitate cross-country comparability, the Entrepreneurship Database employs a consistent unit of measurement, source of information, and concept of entrepreneurship that is applicable and available among the diverse sample of participating economies.

The data collection process involves telephone interviews and email correspondence with business registries in 73 economies. The main sources of information for this study are national business registries. In a limited number of cases where the business registry was unable to provide the data - most often due to an absence of digitized registration systems - the Entrepreneurship Database uses other alternatives sources, such as statistical agencies, tax and labor agencies, chambers of commerce, and private vendors or publicly available data.       
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                While sole proprietorships data is collected and presented, due to differences in the definition of sole proprietors across countries, cross-country comparability is applicable only to limited liability corporations that operate in the formal sector.