Tag: Armenia

Recognizing Unpaid Care: Family-Friendly Policies for Armenia

Posted on September 29, 2026 | Policy Brief

Unpaid care work is a cornerstone of Armenia’s care economy, sustaining families, supporting human development, and underpinning the functioning of society. However, unpaid care work remains largely invisible in economic policymaking and continues to fall disproportionately on women, limiting their participation in the labor market and reinforcing gender inequalities. As Armenia faces population aging, a shrinking labor force and growing care needs, recognizing and investing in the care economy has become both a demographic and an economic imperative. 

Drawing on recent evidence from Armenia, including National Transfer Accounts and National Time Transfer Accounts Surveys, as well as international experience, this policy brief examines how family-friendly policies can help recognize, reduce, and redistribute unpaid care work. It argues that expanding childcare services, promoting shared parental responsibilities, fostering family-friendly workplaces, and integrating care into national policy planning can strengthen women’s economic participation, improve family well-being, and enhance demographic resilience. Investing in the care economy is therefore not only a matter of gender equality, but a strategic investment in Armenia’s sustainable and inclusive development.

Why Unpaid Care Matters for Armenia

Armenia is experiencing profound demographic changes, including below-replacement fertility, population aging, sustained outmigration, and a shrinking working-age population (Statistical Committee of the Republic of Armenia, 2025). These trends are increasing pressure on labor markets, social protection systems, and public finances while raising the importance of maximizing the country’s human capital. In this context, strengthening women’s economic participation is not only a matter of gender equality but also a demographic and economic imperative.

Unpaid care work lies at the center of this challenge. Every day, households rely on unpaid childcare, eldercare, care for persons with disabilities, and domestic work to sustain families and communities. Although these activities are essential for social and economic well-being, they remain largely invisible in conventional economic statistics and continue to be performed predominantly by women (Ameria Management Advisory & United Nations Population Fund, 2024). As a result, women face a disproportionate burden of caregiving responsibilities that limits their participation in paid employment, reduces lifetime earnings, constrains career progression, and contributes to persistent gender inequalities in the labor market. Recent demographic evidence suggests that Armenia’s future prosperity will depend less on increasing population size than on investing in people and creating conditions that enable individuals to reconcile work and family life. Family-friendly policies, including accessible childcare services, equitable parental leave, flexible work arrangements, and measures that promote shared caregiving, can help reduce barriers to women’s employment while supporting families in realizing their reproductive intentions (Fluchtmann, van Veen, & Adema, 2023).

Recognizing, reducing, and redistributing unpaid care work should therefore become a central component of Armenia’s demographic and socio-economic policy agenda. Investing in the care economy is not solely a social welfare measure; it is a strategic investment in human capital, labor productivity, gender equality, and long-term demographic resilience. By integrating care considerations into employment, demographic, and social protection policies, Armenia can better respond to the challenges of population aging while strengthening inclusive and sustainable economic development.

What Evidence Shows

Recent evidence from Armenia’s first National Transfer Accounts (NTA) (2024) and National Time Transfer Accounts (NTTA) (2026) shows that unpaid care work is one of the country’s largest yet least recognized economic resources. Together with national labor market statistics, these findings demonstrate that the unequal distribution of unpaid care is not only a gender equality issue but also a constraint on economic productivity, labor force participation, and demographic resilience (Statistical Committee of the Republic of Armenia, 2025).

 Figure 1. Unpaid Care Work in Armenia: Key Facts

Sources: UNFPA (2024, 2026), National Transfer Accounts (NTA), National Time Transfer Accounts (NTTA); National Statistical Committee of Armenia (2025); OECD, UN Women, ILO, ESCAP.

Unpaid care is a major contributor to Armenia’s economy

The NTTA survey has revealed that women in Armenia perform 24.1 hours of unpaid care and household work per week, compared with 6.3 hours for men, nearly four times more. Women’s unpaid care commitments peak at approximately 44-49 hours per week during the ages of 28-36, coinciding with the years of greatest career advancement and family formation. This overlap highlights how unequal caregiving responsibilities reduce women’s economic participation precisely when their contribution to the labor market is most critical for productivity and demographic resilience. Household tasks account for the largest share of this work, while women also spend 3.8 times more time on childcare than men. The disparity is particularly pronounced during the peak parenting years (ages 23-27), when women devote more than ten times as many hours to childcare.

When this work is assigned an economic value, its contribution becomes impossible to ignore. Depending on the valuation method, unpaid care represents between 16.8% and 46.9% of Armenia’s GDP, reflecting whether care time is valued at low-cost market replacement wages or individuals’ higher potential earnings, exceeding the output of several major formal sectors, including manufacturing and trade. Women generate approximately 80% of this economic value, showing that the care economy continues to rely overwhelmingly on women’s unpaid labor.

Unpaid care constrains women’s economic participation

The unequal distribution of care responsibilities has direct consequences for women’s participation in the labor market. The NTA survey reveals that, unlike men, women do not experience a positive lifecycle surplus at any age, meaning that at no point in the lifecycle does women’s labor income exceed their consumption. Because heavy unpaid care duties limit their paid employment, women’s immense economic contribution remains uncompensated in formal accounts.

This pattern is also reflected in national labor market statistics. Although women have higher rates of tertiary education enrolment than men, 51% of women remain economically inactive, compared with 29% of men (Statistical Committee of the Republic of Armenia, 2025). Women are also significantly underrepresented in leadership and decision-making positions. These disparities indicate that educational attainment alone is insufficient to ensure equal economic opportunities when unpaid care responsibilities remain unequally distributed.

Demographic change increases the urgency for reform

Population aging is expected to increase demand for caregiving while reducing the working-age population (Lee, 2025). NTA projections show that intergenerational transfers are shifting away from investment in children toward supporting older persons. By 2050, an estimated 60% of intergenerational transfers will go toward supporting older adults. This represents a complete reversal of current trends, which prioritize investments in children. Without reforms that strengthen formal care services and enable greater labor market participation, particularly among women, the growing demand for unpaid care is likely to intensify existing labor shortages and place additional pressure on families and public finances.

Collectively, these findings demonstrate that unpaid care work should be recognized as a productive economic activity rather than a private household responsibility. Addressing the unequal distribution of care through family-friendly policies is therefore essential not only for advancing gender equality but also for strengthening Armenia’s economic resilience and long-term demographic sustainability.

Current Policy Gaps

Armenia has established an important policy foundation for addressing demographic change, gender equality, employment, and family well-being. The Demographic Strategy of Armenia (2024-2040), the Employment Strategy (2025-2031), the Gender Policy Implementation Strategy (2025-2028) (Government of the Republic of Armenia, 2024), and Labor Legislation (National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia, 2004) all recognize the importance of supporting families, promoting women’s employment, and improving work-life balance. Collectively, these policy frameworks provide a strong basis for advancing family-friendly policies and responding to demographic challenges.

However, important implementation gaps continue to limit their effectiveness. While maternity protection and childcare leave are well established, fathers’ participation in caregiving remains limited because paternity leave is short (5 working days) and there is no dedicated, non-transferable parental leave. As a result, caregiving responsibilities continue to fall disproportionately on women, reinforcing traditional gender roles and contributing to career interruptions following childbirth.

Access to affordable and quality childcare services also remains uneven, particularly for children under three years of age, children with disabilities, and families living in rural communities. Limited childcare availability constrains parents’ – especially mothers’ ability to enter or remain in the labor market, despite high levels of educational attainment among women (United Nations Children’s Fund & Global Partnership for Education, 2022).

Although Armenian labor legislation provides opportunities for flexible work arrangements, their implementation remains inconsistent across sectors, and family-friendly workplace practices are not yet widely institutionalized. Flexible working hours, hybrid work models, phased return-to-work arrangements and workplace support for employees with caregiving responsibilities remain largely dependent on individual employers rather than forming part of a broader national approach.

Finally, policy reforms continue to operate within a social context where caregiving is widely perceived as a woman’s primary responsibility. Persistent gender stereotypes influence both household decision-making and workplace expectations, reducing the effectiveness of existing policy measures and limiting fathers’ engagement in childcare and other caregiving responsibilities. International experience demonstrates that legislative reforms are most effective when accompanied by measures that promote behavioral change, employer engagement, and shared caregiving norms. (de la Porte et al., 2022; UNFPA EECARO, 2021)

Addressing these gaps requires moving beyond individual policy measures toward an integrated family-friendly policy framework that recognizes unpaid care as a shared societal responsibility. Such an approach would better align demographic, labor market, social protection, education, and gender equality policies while creating enabling conditions for both women and men to participate fully in paid work and family life.

Five Priority Policy Actions

  1. Expand Access to Affordable and Inclusive Childcare Services

Expanding access to quality, affordable, and inclusive childcare services should be a national priority for strengthening women’s labor force participation and supporting demographic resilience. Although Armenia has made progress in increasing preschool enrollment, significant gaps remain for children under three years of age, children with disabilities, and families living in rural communities. These gaps often force women to reduce working hours, postpone career advancement, or leave employment altogether.

International experience demonstrates that investment in early childhood education and care is one of the most effective policy instruments for increasing female employment, reducing poverty, supporting child development, and improving long-term economic productivity (Fluchtmann et al., 2023; UNICEF & Global Partnership for Education, 2022). Armenia could adopt a phased approach that expands community-based childcare services, increases public investment in early childhood education, strengthens inclusive service provision, and introduces targeted childcare subsidies for vulnerable families.

Figure 2. Investing in the care economy for gender equality and demographic resilience in Armenia

Source: Authors’ analysis based on data from Armenia NTA 2024, NTTA 2026, and international evidence

  1. Promote Shared Caregiving through More Equitable Parental Leave

Achieving a more balanced distribution of unpaid care requires greater participation of fathers in childcare from the earliest stages of parenthood. Armenia’s current parental leave framework continues to place primary caregiving responsibilities on mothers, while existing paternity leave provisions remain too limited to influence caregiving patterns.

International experience, particularly from the Nordic countries, demonstrates that dedicated, adequately compensated, non-transferable leave for fathers substantially increases paternal involvement in childcare and contributes to more equal sharing of unpaid care throughout children’s lives (United Nations Population Fund [UNFPA EECARO], 2021). Although replicating Nordic-style universal wage replacement is limited by public budget constraints and entrenched traditional caregiving norms, Armenia can take high-impact incremental steps by introducing dedicated, non-transferable leave for fathers and strengthening targeted financial benefits.

  1. Foster Family-Friendly Workplaces

Creating family-friendly workplaces is essential for enabling parents and other caregivers to reconcile paid employment with family responsibilities. Flexible work arrangements, including hybrid work, flexible scheduling, phased return-to-work after parental leave, and breastfeeding support, have become increasingly important tools for improving work-life balance and retaining skilled workers.

Beyond legislative provisions, Armenia could encourage employers to voluntarily adopt family-friendly workplace practices through incentive mechanisms, recognition programs, or certification schemes. Such approaches would benefit employers by improving staff retention and productivity while supporting greater labor market participation among women and other caregivers.

  1. Integrate Unpaid Care into National Economic and Demographic Policy

The findings from Armenia’s National Transfer Accounts and National Time Transfer Accounts demonstrate that unpaid care constitutes a substantial contribution to the national economy. Yet this contribution remains largely invisible in policy planning and economic decision-making.

Recognizing unpaid care as a productive economic activity would support more evidence-based policymaking across employment, demographic, social protection, and fiscal policies. Armenia should institutionalize regular Time Use Surveys, continue developing National Time Transfer Accounts, strengthen sex-disaggregated data collection and integrate unpaid care indicators into national development monitoring. Better measurement would enable policymakers to assess the economic returns of investments in childcare, family-friendly policies, and gender equality.

  1. Transform Social Norms through Public Awareness and Institutional Change

Policy reforms alone cannot achieve a more equitable distribution of unpaid care. Deeply rooted gender stereotypes continue to assign caregiving responsibilities primarily to women, limiting both women’s economic opportunities and men’s participation in family life.

Changing social norms requires sustained public investment in awareness campaigns, positive fatherhood initiatives, education programs and employer engagement. Promoting caregiving as a shared responsibility between women and men should become an integral component of demographic, education, labor market and gender equality policies. Strengthening partnerships with civil society, employers, academia and the media can further support behavioral change and increase public acceptance of family-friendly reforms.

Conclusion and Strategic Way Forward

Unpaid care work underpins Armenia’s households and economy, yet its heavy reliance on women limits female labor force participation, deepens gender inequalities and constrains national productivity. Addressing this challenge requires moving beyond fragmented interventions toward a comprehensive, evidence-based strategy. The five priority policy actions highlighted in this brief- expanding affordable childcare, introducing equitable parental leave for fathers, fostering family-friendly workplaces, embedding unpaid care into economic planning and state policies, and shifting societal norms- form an interconnected framework to redistribute the care burden.

Because these family-friendly measures are mutually reinforcing, isolated implementation will yield limited gains. Embedding this package directly into Armenia’s Demographic, Employment and Gender Policy strategies, backed by cross-ministerial coordination, will maximize public investment, strengthen human capital and drive long-term demographic and economic resilience.

References

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.

Gender Gaps in Access to Startup Capital in Armenia

Posted on September 28, 2026 | Policy Brief

This brief examines whether women in Armenia have less access to early-stage startup funding and what may explain that gap. The available evidence points to a striking imbalance: in a sample of 45 funded Armenian startups, only 7 (15 percent) include a woman founder or co-founder. The structural features of the ecosystem likely reinforce this gap. First, Armenia’s startup market is small and network-dependent — roughly 144 active startups and about USD 164 million in total funding — so access to capital runs heavily through personal connections, and each gatekeeper carries more weight. Second, women bear a heavier share of care and time burdens, leaving less room for the sustained networking on which relationship-based funding depends. The brief, therefore, makes a broader policy claim. Armenia should treat gender gaps in startup capital not only as a funding problem, but also as a market design and care infrastructure problem. A stronger response would combine better gender-disaggregated funding data, more inclusive pathways into investor networks, and more practical support for shared care responsibilities.

Armenia’s startup ecosystem is young, small, and highly network-dependent — the kind of market in which who gets funded can hinge on who is known and trusted. Gender is one such line of division. This brief asks whether women in Armenia have weaker access to early-stage startup funding, and if so, what explains the gap.

The concern is grounded in broader evidence on women entrepreneurs in the country: the IFC/World Bank Women Entrepreneurship Study in Armenia finds that access to finance is the most prominent obstacle entrepreneurs report (International Finance Corporation, 2021). And the barrier is not only a matter of investor choice or founder readiness — women’s access is also shaped by collateral constraints and by unequal access to productive assets tied to inheritance and land ownership.

This brief looks first at what international evidence suggests about gender gaps in startup capital. Then it turns to the Armenian evidence: what the visible funding landscape reveals about women’s access to startup capital, how the small size and network dependence of the ecosystem shape that access, and how unequal care and time burdens reinforce it. It closes with a set of policy recommendations spanning funding-data transparency, more inclusive investor access, and shared care support.

What International Evidence Suggests

International research shows that women founders are disadvantaged in many early-stage funding markets, particularly where investor decisions rely on networks, informal signals, and subjective judgments of founder potential (Kanze et al., 2020; Koch et al., 2025; Liao et al., 2024). Women are less likely to secure external funding and, when they do, tend to raise less: across OECD and BRICS countries, startups with at least one woman founder are 5 to 10 percent less likely to be funded and receive about one third less when funded (Lassébie et al., 2019). Part of this reflects how investors evaluate founders — women are more often asked prevention-focused questions about risks, men promotion-focused questions about growth (Kanze et al., 2018).

The gap is not driven by investor bias alone; pipeline, startup orientation, and signaling explain part of it, though a substantial share remains unexplained. Fewer women may enter the funding process at all; women-led ventures are more often presented as smaller or local businesses rather than the fast-growth companies investors seek; and investors lean on visible signals — prior startup experience, early sales, a strong team, accelerator participation, trusted referrals. Yet these factors do not close the gap: even after accounting for them, women founders still face additional barriers to capital. In the United States, female-led ventures are 63 percent less likely to obtain venture capital, about 65 percent of that difference linked to initial startup orientation, with the remainder persisting after controls (Guzman and Kacperczyk, 2019). That gap narrows when stronger growth signals are available, and, conditional on funding, women- and men-led ventures achieve exits at similar rates. This last result should be read with caution, as it covers only ventures past the selection stage — but it suggests weaker access to capital should not be taken as evidence of weaker post-funding performance.

Investor composition matters too. Bellucci et al. (2024) find that female-owned businesses receive lower funding only when the angel investor is a man — a warning sign for markets where angel investing is relationship-driven and male-dominated. A recent OECD review makes a similar point: angel investment (i.e., that by individual early-stage investors who invest their own money in startups) is especially important for women entrepreneurs, yet they are disadvantaged by thinner networks and the underrepresentation of women among angel investors (OECD, 2025).

Taken together, this literature suggests that gender gaps in startup capital are shaped by both supply-side and demand-side forces: investor perceptions and investor composition matter, but so do pipeline conditions, access to networks, and the quality of the signals founders can present.

This framing is especially relevant for Armenia. Its startup ecosystem is small and tightly networked, with a limited pool of early-stage capital concentrated among relatively few investors — precisely the conditions under which the international dynamics of network reliance, informal signaling, and a male-dominated investor base are amplified rather than offset. When capital flows through a handful of relationships, being outside those networks is more costly than in deep, liquid markets. The rest of this brief examines how these forces appear in the Armenian evidence, and what they imply for who gets to build and grow.

Evidence Base and Approach

The approach in this brief is exploratory and relies on triangulation rather than causal identification. It combines international academic and institutional research on gender gaps in startup finance, Armenian studies on women’s entrepreneurship and access to finance, and ecosystem-level evidence from Armenia’s startup landscape originating from 2carrots VC Database, an Armenian startup database.

One of the key reasons for the chosen approach is data limitations. Armenia does not yet have a systematic public dataset showing founder gender across grants, accelerators, angel investment, and venture capital. The currently visible funding landscape should therefore be read as a descriptive signal rather than a complete national census of startup finance. Even so, the available evidence is strong enough to justify policy attention, especially when combined with signs of a narrow startup market, limited capital depth, and weak supportive conditions around childcare and time use.

Key Findings

Women Are Underrepresented among Funded Startups in Armenia

The clearest visible ecosystem signal is straightforward: women rarely appear among funded founders. To examine this, we used the 2carrots VC Database, a public database of Armenian startups that lists startup profiles and ecosystem information. In a sample of 45 funded startups across 8 venture capital firms and angel investor groups in Armenia, only 7 (15%) appear to include a woman founder or co-founder. Even with all the caveats that come with partial data, this is a striking imbalance. It suggests that women are not achieving the same visible investment outcomes as men.

This pattern matters because it appears in a small, shallow startup market. An article published in the Caucasus Business Journal reports around $164 million in total startup funding across the Armenian ecosystem, while Seedstars describes only 144 active startups in the country. In a larger, deeper capital market, founders may have more routes to funding and a greater chance to recover from early exclusion. In a smaller market like Armenia, each gatekeeper matters more. Under those conditions, underrepresentation among funded startups becomes more consequential because exclusion at an early stage is more likely to have a lasting effect.

Armenia’s Narrow Early-stage Market May Make Network Access Particularly Important

In Armenia’s small early-stage funding market, founders appear to have fewer formal and alternative routes to startup capital than they would in a larger, deeper market. This makes access to investor networks especially important. The broader venture capital literature helps explain why: Alexy et al. (2011) show that venture capitalists’ social networks can shape funding decisions because networks give investors access to information about investment opportunities and help reduce uncertainty.

Armenian evidence also highlights the relevance of these connections. In a Seedstars interview, EBRD’s Armenuhi Arakelyan identifies diaspora ties as a source of funding, expertise, and networking opportunities (Seedstars, 2025). The IFC’s qualitative research reports limited interaction among women entrepreneurs and insufficient connections with sectoral associations and specialized NGOs, restricting their access to information and opportunities. However, it notes that networking is more prevalent in the IT sector (International Finance Corporation, 2021).

Applied to Armenia, this suggests that when the number of visible investors and funding channels is limited, referrals, repeated contact, and personal visibility may carry greater weight. In practice, access to the right circles can therefore matter more. Such a market structure can disadvantage women founders even without explicit exclusion if they are less embedded in investor networks and therefore have fewer opportunities to build the repeated visibility and trust on which relationship-based funding depends.

Unequal Care and Time Burdens Help Explain Why Access to Those Networks Is Not Equal

Fundraising is not just about having a strong idea or writing a pitch deck. It requires repeated meetings, networking, travel, follow-up, and sustained visibility — all of which take time. And time is precisely what women in Armenia are more likely to lack. A 2021 IFC and World Bank study of more than 400 Armenian businesses found that women were more likely than men to report lack of time and work-life balance as obstacles (International Finance Corporation, 2021).

These pressures become more consequential when supportive conditions around care are weak. The World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law profile scores Armenia at 75 out of 100 on legal frameworks, but only 45 out of 100 on supportive frameworks, with childcare supportive frameworks at 0 (World Bank, 2026). The practical implication is that care remains unevenly distributed and women bear more of the time cost. When fathers are not strongly supported or incentivized to share childcare responsibilities, women have less flexibility for the intensity that early-stage entrepreneurship often demands.

The problem is likely exacerbated by the network design. The problem may be exacerbated by the timing of networking events. For example, Startup Grind Yerevan’s Pitch Battle on 15 January 2025 was scheduled for 18:30–20:30, with representatives of angel investor networks among its judges (Startup Grind, 2025). Armenia’s National Services Gateway states that most kindergartens close at 17:30, with some extending to 18:30 (National Services Gateway, n.d.). Attending such evening events may therefore require additional childcare arrangements, potentially limiting participation among founders with substantial care responsibilities.

In that sense, the care burden is not separate from the capital access problem. It is one of the conditions that helps explain why women may have weaker access to the networks, meetings, and repeated relationship-building through which early startup funding often flows. This is why childcare policy should not be treated as unrelated to startup finance. In the Armenian context, it forms part of the wider structure that shapes who can participate fully in entrepreneurial life.

Policy Recommendations

The evidence in this brief suggests that Armenia should address gender gaps in startup capital on two fronts simultaneously. The first is the funding market itself: who gets seen, introduced, and funded in a small, network-dependent ecosystem. The second is the time constraints brought about by uneven allocation of household duties and childcare that shape who can participate fully in that market. Policy should therefore focus not only on improving women founders’ access to investors, but also on reducing the structural constraints that make that access unequal in the first place.

Build a Gender-disaggregated Startup Funding Dashboard

The first priority is visibility. Armenia should begin systematically tracking founder gender across grants, accelerator cohorts, startup competitions, angel-backed deals, and venture investments that involve public or donor support. Without basic visibility on who gets funded, the debate will continue to rely on partial signals and anecdotes. This tracking should cover not only the number of women-led teams funded, but also ticket size, stage, and follow-on outcomes. A stronger evidence base would make it easier to identify where the gap is largest and whether existing support programs are helping to close it.

Make Investor Access More Inclusive and Less Dependent on Informal Evening Networking

A second priority is to widen the channels through which founders can reach investors. Public and donor-backed startup programs should create more daytime networking opportunities, more online investor sessions, more structured introductions, and less reliance on informal evening gatherings as the main route into capital. In a small ecosystem, relationship-building may remain essential. But if that is the case, then the formats through which relationships are built should not systematically advantage founders with fewer care constraints and easier access to late-evening social environments. Making investor access more inclusive is not a peripheral adjustment. It is part of improving how the market works.

Strengthen Shared Childcare Support as Part of the Economic Infrastructure

Better access to startup capital cannot be separated entirely from the wider care environment, although childcare support should be understood as an enabling condition rather than a stand-alone solution to the funding gap. The evidence does not show that better childcare arrangements automatically translate into better startup funding outcomes. However, it does show that care and time constraints shape women’s ability to participate fully in entrepreneurial activity. Armenia should therefore treat shared childcare support as part of the economic infrastructure that makes entrepreneurship more feasible, not as a substitute for finance and network reforms. This means improving childcare availability and affordability, encouraging fathers’ active participation in care, protecting men who use care-related leave or flexible work arrangements, and using public messaging to frame childcare as a shared responsibility. For women founders, the expected benefit is practical: more time and flexibility for networking, travel, investor meetings, and sustained visibility. Startup programs can reinforce this by offering hybrid participation, flexible scheduling, and childcare support where feasible.

Overall Recommendation

Taken together, the evidence reviewed in this brief supports a combined policy response rather than a single intervention. Armenia should improve gender-disaggregated startup funding data, broaden women founders’ access to investors through more inclusive and structured networking channels, and treat shared childcare support as complementary economic infrastructure. This approach reflects the literature’s broader finding that funding gaps can arise from both investor-side mechanisms and unequal access to the networks, signals, and conditions needed to compete for startup capital. In Armenia’s small and network-dependent ecosystem, addressing these constraints together is likely to be more effective than treating the funding gap as a stand-alone financing problem.

Concluding Remarks

This brief suggests that gender gaps in startup capital in Armenia are not simply a matter of who pitches better or who investors prefer. They reflect a deeper interaction between market structure and care structure: a small, network-dependent funding ecosystem on the one hand, and unequal time and childcare burdens on the other. As a result, women’s weaker access to startup funding should be understood not only as a gender gap in outcomes, but also as a question of how entrepreneurial opportunity is organized.

The implication is clear. Armenia should address this problem not only by widening women founders’ access to investors, but also by reducing the structural constraints that make that access unequal in the first place. A more open funding market, combined with stronger support for shared care, would not only improve fairness but also strengthen the system. It would also strengthen the reach and overall effectiveness of the Armenian startup ecosystem.

References

  • 2carrots VC Database. Accessed September 20, 2026.
  • Alexy, Oliver T., Joern H. Block, Philipp Sandner, and Anne L. J. Ter Wal, “Social capital of venture capitalists and start-up funding,” Small Business Economics, April 2011, 39 (4), 835–851.
  • Bellucci, Andrea, Gianluca Gucciardi, Rossella Locatelli, and Cristiana-Maria Schena, “Gender Gap in Business Angel Financing,” Entrepreneurship Research Journal, May 2024, 15 (2), 289–324.
  • Guzman, Jorge and Aleksandra (Olenka) Kacperczyk, “Gender gap in entrepreneurship,” Research Policy, September 2019, 48 (7), 1666–1680.
  • International Finance Corporation, “Women Entrepreneurship Study in Armenia: Qualitative and Quantitative Study, Synthesis Report,” Technical Report, International Finance Corporation, Yerevan, Armenia March 2021.
  • Kanze, Dana, Laura Huang, Mark A. Conley, and E. Tory Higgins, “We Ask Men to Win and Women Not to Lose: Closing the Gender Gap in Startup Funding,” Academy of Management Journal, April 2018, 61 (2), 586–614.
  • Kanze, Dana, Mark A. Conley, Tyler G. Okimoto, Damon J. Phillips, and Jennifer Merluzzi, “Evidence that investors penalize female founders for lack of industry fit,” Science Advances, November 2020, 6 (48).
  • Koch, Laura H., Elisabeth S. C. Berger, and Andreas Kuckertz, “Gender bias and discrimination towards women entrepreneurs by venture capitalists – a randomized response survey,” Venture Capital, April 2025, p. 1–27.
  • Lassébie, Julie, Sahra Sakha, Tomasz Kozluk, Carlo Menon, Stefano Breschi, and Nick Johnstone, “Levelling the Playing Field: Dissecting the Gender Gap in the Funding of Startups,” Technical Report, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development April 2019. Approved by the Committee on Industry, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) on 8 April 2019.
  • Liao, Zhenyu, Jack H. Zhang, Nan Wang, William P. Bottom, Dirk Deichmann, and Pok Man Tang, “The Gendered Liability of Venture Novelty,” Academy of Management Journal, April 2024, 67 (2), 299–330.
  • Seedstars, 2025. “How Armenia built an ecosystem bigger than its borders”. Accessed June September 21, 2026.
  • OECD, Bridging the Finance Gap for Women Entrepreneurs: Insights from Academic and Policy Research OECD Studies on SMEs and Entrepreneurship, OECD Publishing, 2025.
  • Siegrist, Felicia, “Supporting Women Entrepreneurs in Developing Countries: What Works? A Review of the Evidence Base and We-Fi’s Theory of Change,” Technical Report, Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative, Washington, D.C. July 2022.
  • Ubfal, Diego Javier, “What Works in Supporting Women-Led Businesses?,” Policy Research Working Paper WPS10744, World Bank Group, Washington, D.C. April 2024.
  • World Bank, “Women, Business and the Law: Armenia Country Profile,” Technical Report, World Bank Group 2026.

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.

“Extraordinary” Ordinary Elections in Armenia

Posted on June 1, 2026 | Policy Brief

On June 7, Armenia holds parliamentary elections following a competitive and aggressive campaign. The central battleground is twofold: the fragile peace deal with Azerbaijan, and Armenia’s geopolitical dilemma — alignment with Russia or movement towards Europe. Parties have raised the stakes to an existential level, warning that voting for the wrong side risks the country’s very survival — leaving little room for more conventional policy debates. While polls are favorable for the incumbent, nearly a third of voters remain undecided or silent, and their choice will determine everything.

Electoral Scene

On June 7, 2026, Armenia will elect its 9th parliament. Voters will be choosing from a list of 19 parties or alliances (blocks), among which the incumbent party and a fragmented opposition represented by a few relatively large players.

Elections are primarily dominated by issues related to national security, the peace process with Azerbaijan, and the country’s geopolitical orientation between Europe and Russia (Broers, 2026).

Observers and experts report a high degree of polarization and aggressive rhetoric used during the campaign (Hovhannisyan & Meister, 2026).

If one would like to characterize the elections with one word, that would be “Threat”. The main message the parties are trying to convey to voters is that the cost of making the wrong choice (essentially, not choosing them) is catastrophic, bordering on the country’s existence. As a consequence, there is very little discussion on policy platforms.

The main intrigue of the elections is a relatively high share of undecided voters and those who do not reveal their preferences during the polls. Will they participate and who would they vote for – this is the main question of these elections.

Electoral System

Armenia is a parliamentary democracy in which the National Assembly is elected by proportional representation, with seats allocated among parties and alliances that pass the legal threshold (4% for parties and 8% for blocks/alliances of parties). Since the constitutional changes of 2015 shifted executive power toward the Parliament, the prime minister is elected by the National Assembly, while the President is chosen indirectly and has a largely ceremonial role. Seats allocated to a party are distributed by calculating the proportion of the votes given to that party with respect to all votes of the parties that overcome the threshold.  If no party reaches 50+ percent of the seats, coalition talks are opened. First, the party with the relative majority of votes gets the opportunity to form a coalition that would ensure 50+ votes, and in case this does not work out, other parties above the threshold are allowed to form a coalition. If this fails, the second round of elections will be held.

The electoral law requires each third position in the electoral list of the party to be allocated to a woman. According to the analysis of party lists, 38 percent of all candidates across 19 parties are women, and the average age of candidates is 46. Overall, the lists include more than 2,100 candidates, and reserved seats for ethnic minorities are allocated through a separate list of 22 candidates. Specifically, four seats in the Parliament are reserved for ethnic minorities – Russians, Assyrians, Yazidis, and Kurds.

Figure 1. Age and gender in the forthcoming 2026 Parliamentary elections’ candidate lists

Source: Central Electoral Commission, authors calculations. Note: CC – Civil Contract (ruling party), Hayastan – Hayastan Alliance, SA – Strong Armenia, PA- Prosperous Armenia, WU – Wings of Unity. See Section Main Players for details.

Main Players

While 19 parties are registered for the elections, the real competition, as one would expect, takes place among only a few of them.

Civil Contract, in power since 2018 under the leadership of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, is the favorite of the race. The party positions itself as reformist, anti-corruption, and pro-democracy. Its main propositions are continuing institutional reforms, pursuing peace negotiations with Azerbaijan, and gradually deepening cooperation with the EU and Western partners.

Strong Armenia is a newly established opposition force led by major entrepreneur and investor Samvel Karapetyan. The party prioritizes business-oriented governance, national security, and closer strategic ties with Russia. It emphasizes traditional national institutions, such as the Armenian Apostolic Church.

Hayastan Alliance is led by former president Robert Kocharyan. Its core proposition is that Armenia requires more experienced and security-focused leadership, closer strategic coordination with Russia, and a tougher negotiating posture in regional affairs.

Prosperous Armenia is a business-oriented political party that emphasizes economic growth, social support programs, and improvements in living standards. Its main propositions include job creation, infrastructure development, support for small and medium-sized enterprises, and maintaining a pragmatic and balanced foreign policy approach.

Wings of Unity, led by former Ombudsman Armen Tatoyan, positions itself around national security, rule of law, protection of national interests, and institutional resilience. The movement emphasizes strengthening Armenia’s security architecture, defending human rights and state sovereignty, and restoring public trust in governance and national institutions.

While not among the main players, there is an interesting “experiment” embedded in these elections. Among the parties competing, there is a party called “Against all”. A ballot option that existed years ago is now featured as a party with essentially only one program point: change the electoral law, unwind the Parliament, and call for new elections.

Core Issues

It is difficult to judge who sets the main agenda, but the central debated issues are quite clear.

One of the central topics of the elections is “peace building” with Azerbaijan. In its program, Prime Minister Pashinyan states: ” On June 7, go vote and stand for peace by supporting the Civil Contract party”. While the incumbent views its actions as protecting a fragile peace through international legitimacy, the contestants view the same actions as eroding national sovereignty and traditional foundations.

A consequential discussion is what the role of external actors is and the extent to which they influence the country’s policy agenda. The closer the election date, the harsher the rhetoric. “Electing Tsarukyan (the leader of Prosperous Armenia party) is equivalent to electing Aleksandr Lukashenko (the President of Belarus),” announced Prime Minister Pashinyan during the meeting with his supporters (May 13, 2026). “Electing Pashinyan is the same as electing Aliyev (the President of Azerbaijan),” announced the former President and one of the opposition leaders, Robert Kocharyan, during a similar event (May 19, 2026).

During his visit to Armenia within the framework of the 8th Summit of the European Political Community (EPC) on May 4th, French President Macron said: “Armenia has indeed made the choice… to break free from this constraint and turn towards Europe” (Brezar, 2026). On May 9th, after the traditional parade in Moscow, Vladimir Putin, during a press conference, highlighted that Armenia needs to make up its mind about European Integration as soon as possible to avoid consequences observed in Ukraine (Civilnet, May 11, 2026).

And this leads to the second core issue: Armenia’s alignment in the confrontation between Russia and Europe. Essentially, both the EU and Russia implicitly or explicitly push Armenia to make a choice, and irrespective of their intentions, this becomes one of the central issues around which the electoral competition is constructed.

For the first time, the Nagorno-Karabakh issue is not among the important ones in Armenia. As an important background, these are the first elections since the exodus of Armenians from the region in September of 2023. Roughly 35 thousand out of a total of more than 100 thousand refugees will be eligible to vote as a consequence of applying and getting Armenian citizenship (News.am, March 20, 2026 ). With 2.5 million eligible voters, the refugees will hardly have any effect on these elections.

What Do Programs Contain?

Heated mutual allegations and strong language regarding the core issues make the headlines of these elections. But the parties also compete on more specific promises. The cornerstone of the opposition party Strong Armenia’s program is the creation of 300 thousand jobs within 6 years from now (Party programs are available at https://www.elections.am/Elections/Parliamentary). The incumbent party’s promise is somewhat less ambitious – 25 thousand jobs annually. These elections are not lacking in creative ideas either. To mention a few: Wings of Unity proposes abandoning VAT and moving to sales tax, Prosperous Armenia promises to double the minimum wage and triple GDP in five years. In different framings, free education, free housing for families with more than 3 children, subsidized agriculture, and lower taxes for small businesses are included in the programs of various parties.

Interestingly, none of the major parties (maybe with the exception of Hayastan Alliance) advocates for a certain choice between deeper integration with the West (be that the EU or the  US) or Russia. At least on paper, the parties find it possible to continue maintaining balance and developing relations with all stakeholders in the region.

The External Squeeze

Major regional and international commitments of the Republic provide a rich playfield for both the current government and the opposition. On August 8, 2025, Pashinyan and Azerbaijan’s President Aliyev joined the US President Donald Trump in Washington to pre-sign the peace treaty. A major element of the summit was the announcement of a proposed regional transit and infrastructure initiative called the TRIPP project (“Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity”). On the margins of the same meeting in Washington, Armenia and the US also agreed to cooperate on nuclear energy production in Armenia. All these steps, coupled with an ongoing visa liberalization process and deeper engagement with EU partners, resulted in voiced concerns by Russia. In fact, Russia went beyond voicing concerns. On May 22nd, Rospotrebnadzor (Russia’s federal agency responsible for consumer protection and enforcement of food and product safety regulations) temporarily suspended the import and turnover of all batches of Jermuk mineral water in Russia (ARKA (a), May 22, 2026). Two days earlier, Rosselkhoznadzor (Russia’s federal agency responsible for phytosanitary control and oversight of animal and plant imports) announced that starting from May 22, the import of Armenian flowers to Russia will be temporarily restricted. Both are important export items for Armenia (ARKA (b), May 22, 2026).

The Kremlin’s approach is rational – make sure that in the process of possible future EU integration, the costs of leaving the Eurasian Economic Union kick in much earlier than the benefits from deeper cooperation with the EU. Whether this is a signal to any winner of the elections or an indirect way to influence outcomes is an open question.

The fact that the leader of the new opposition party, Samvel Karapetyan, has made his fortune in Russia complicates the landscape even more.

What Do Polls Say?

The results of the most recent polls at the time of this brief’s writing are summarized in Figure 2.

Figure 2. April-May poll results of the main competing parties

Source: IRI – International Republican Institute (May, 2026); EVN Report (April, 2026); GIA (May, 2026), Gallup International Association. (not to be confused with Gallup).

While all these polls claim to be nationally representative and to provide results within conventional error margins, the differences among them are significant. Also, in the 2021 elections, the winning party received more than 50% of the total votes, while pre-election polls had put it at roughly half that share (IRI, May 2021). One likely source contributing to this difference was the involvement of originally undecided voters. In 2021, according to the same source, 17% of poll respondents planned to abstain with certainty or with a high likelihood. If many of them eventually decided to come and vote for the incumbent, that could have tilted the scales.

In the current elections, the situation repeats. The share of undecided voters according to various polls is quite large as well (Figure 3). What if the undecided voters make up their minds and participate?

Figure 3. Undecided voters and possible abstainers

Source: IRI – International Republican Institute (May, 2026); EVN Report (April, 2026); GIA (May, 2026), Gallup International Association. (not to be confused with Gallup). “Will not vote” refers to those who are certain about that choice.

We have implemented a simple simulation to understand the role undecided voters can play. To do that, we have assumed a scenario in which the incumbent’s support is taken from the least optimistic poll, and the opposition’s support is slightly boosted (see note below Figure 4).

Figure 4. Simulation of the effect of undecided votes on outcomes, assuming they vote.

Source: Author’s calculations. Scenario assumptions: Share of undecided votes – 20%. Support in population assumption: Civil Contract (CC – incumbent) – 25%, Strong Armenia (SA) – 15%, Hayastan Block – 8%, Prosperous Armenia – slightly less than 4%. Shares going to the opposition are split between the two parties in respective proportions. The votes of respondents refusing to answer (around 20%) were split among all parties in proportion to their existing (stated) support. It is assumed that no other parties pass the threshold.

Essentially, the results indicate that even if all undecided votes are mobilized, the opposition must capture more than half of them to bring the elections to the 2nd round.

Conclusion

An objective that the parties seem to have accomplished quite well was to convince the devoted voters that their defeat would result in an apocalyptic outcome. As a result, we witness aggressive campaigns, high polarization, and a lack of policy discussion. Whether this will encourage or discourage voters to participate, we will learn on June 7th.

At the moment, neither the EU nor Armenia has expressed readiness to consider granting Armenia candidate-country status, nor has Armenia announced the intention to exit the Eurasian Economic Union. Past experience suggests that these are long processes, taking years if not decades to unravel, and multiple pivots can occur in these directions over the coming years, irrespective of the election outcome.

Yet even if the vote does not ultimately determine where the country is heading, it remains decisive for who will steer it — and that hinges on a single unknown: a bloc of voters who refuse to be counted. The ruling party leads in the polls, but its margin may depend on them. For the opposition merely to reach a second round, it would need not just to mobilize undecided voters but to win more than half of them – yet, the evidence points to most of them not voting at all, as in 2021. Armenia has never gone to a second round, and the numbers make a first-round result the most probable outcome. What June 7th will really reveal, then, is whether a campaign fought almost entirely on fear pulled anyone off the sidelines, or pushed them further away.

References

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this brief are the author’s personal views and in no way reflect the views of the American University of Armenia, or those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.