Tag: Gender Data Gap

Making Agricultural Policy Work for Women in Armenia

Posted on October 29, 2026 | Policy Brief

Agriculture employs more Armenian women than any other sector, yet the country’s agricultural policy has almost no gender dimension. The 2020–2030 agricultural strategy names gender equality as a guiding principle, but the programs that deliver subsidies, credit, and machinery neither target women nor track whether they benefit. Drawing on a 2024–2025 survey of 201 women with access to land in Lori, Tavush and Vayots Dzor, this brief shows that women are active in every phase of farming, but limited access to machinery, finance, inputs and infrastructure holds back their productivity and earnings. Many also farm land that is not legally theirs, which can shut them out of support altogether. We propose ways to raise productivity on the land women already farm and to help them earn more from it.

Why Agriculture Matters for Women’s Economic Empowerment

Armenia’s position in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index improved from 102nd in 2016 to 59th (of 148 countries) in 2025, but it ranks only 91st on economic participation and opportunity (World Economic Forum, 2025). The remaining gender gaps lie mostly in the economy, and Armenian women’s potential remains underused. The government has made closing these gaps an explicit goal. Its Strategy and Action Plan for the Implementation of Gender Policy for 2025–2028 lists women’s socioeconomic and labor market advancement among its six priorities (Government of the Republic of Armenia, 2025b).

Agricultural policy is one of the strongest levers available to reach that goal. Agriculture remains vital to livelihoods and food security in rural Armenia, home to 36% of the population (Armstat, 2024), and in 2025 accounted for 7.9% of GDP (Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Armenia, 2026). It is also the single largest employer of women: 31.2% of employed women work in agriculture, compared with 23.3% of employed men (World Bank, 2025).

Nearly all of this work is informal. In 2024, 96.3% of women employed in agriculture worked informally, approximately 89,100 women (Armstat, 2025). The origins of this informality lie largely in policy design rather than gender, notably the tax exemption on income from selling one’s own farm produce (Tax Code of the Republic of Armenia, 2016). Because this income is untaxed, most farm households have no reason to register as businesses, so their farm work is never formally recorded. According to international statistical standards, people who work in an unregistered household farm, or who help on a family farm without pay, are counted as informally employed. The consequences, however, fall more heavily on women, because a larger share of working women than men depend on farming. Informal status leaves workers outside pension accumulation, social protection and formal credit histories, and renders them largely invisible to program targeting.

The sector also produces far below its potential. Government assessments behind the 2020–2030 agricultural strategy found that in 2018 nearly half of Armenia’s arable land was uncultivated or used inefficiently (Government of the Republic of Armenia, 2019). Recent reporting suggests the pattern persists (Pamorama.am, 2026). Land ownership adds a further barrier. When land was privatized in the early 1990s, it was allotted to rural citizens regardless of sex, but it was registered in the name of the “head of household”, who was usually a man. Since then, mostly male long-term labor migration, together with widowhood and divorce, has left 26.5% of rural households headed by women (FAO, 2017). Yet the land often remains in the name of an absent husband or his family.

Traditions widen the gap. In patrilocal marriages, which are common in rural areas, a bride moves in with her husband’s family, and women rarely claim their share of land from either family for fear of seeming confrontational. Many women who manage farms therefore do not formally own the land they work on, and they lose what documented ownership brings: access to credit, farm equipment and technical knowledge (FAO, 2017). Rural women also spend over six hours a day on unpaid household duties, more than urban women and roughly twice as much as rural men, leaving less time for productive and commercial activities (FAO, 2017).

This brief asks how agricultural policy can serve Armenia’s gender equality goals. We show that agricultural support programs are not designed with women in mind, use a survey of women who farm to identify what limits their productivity and earnings, and propose policy recommendations.

Agricultural Policy: Gender-Aware on Paper, Gender-Blind in Practice

The Strategy of the Main Directions Ensuring Economic Development in the Agricultural Sector of the Republic of Armenia for 2020–2030 commits to inclusive growth and names gender equality among its guiding principles (Government of the Republic of Armenia, 2019). The 2025–2028 gender strategy, the EU’s Gender Action Plan III for Armenia, and donor programs such as UNDP’s Platform #5 point the same way. On paper, the policy framework is gender-aware. The gap lies in delivery. The programs that actually channel support to farmers contain few, if any, gender-specific design features, targets, or monitoring requirements. UN Women flagged this weakness in its 2018 gender assessment of agricultural policies (UN Women, 2018).

The current program cycle illustrates this: the toolset for agricultural support is rich, yet none of it is designed with women in mind. The Government’s 2025 crop support program reimburses 50% of cultivation costs for grain, legume, and fodder crops, up to 11 million AMD per beneficiary, with a budget of about 1.5 billion AMD (Government of the Republic of Armenia, 2025a). Moreover, for 2026, agriculture accounts for most of the Ministry of Economy budget, at 74.5 billion AMD, including 10.1 billion AMD for the agricultural development assistance program (Finport.am, 2025). Interest rate subsidies on agricultural loans and machinery leasing form another major channel, and a separate state program supports intensive orchards and higher-value crops through affordable loans and partial compensation for modern irrigation systems and anti-hail nets (Government of the Republic of Armenia, 2019).

However, none of these instruments target women, and their design fits poorly with the constraints women face. Cost reimbursement and credit subsidies assume documented land use or ownership and the cash to pay expenses up front; leasing assumes a credit record that informal workers without registered assets cannot show. Where land is registered to a male household head, as privatization usually left it, a woman may be unable to apply in her own name even when she does most of the work on the land (FAO, 2017).

Data on agricultural lending or subsidy uptake broken down by sex is not publicly available, so the size of any gender gap in access cannot be measured directly. However, the eligibility rules give good reason to expect one, and the missing data are part of the problem.

More generally, there is no recent comprehensive research on Armenia’s agricultural sector, and its gender dimensions in particular. This gap is striking given the sector’s importance to employment, rural livelihoods and food security, and the large number of women involved in agricultural work.

Evidence from Women Who Farm

Because official sex-disaggregated data on agricultural support is lacking, this section turns to evidence from women farmers themselves. It examines three questions: what prevents their land from being fully cultivated, what support they report needing, and whether their current crop choices limit their earnings. We draw on a survey of women with access to land, conducted in 2024–2025 by R-Insights LLC for UNDP Armenia’s Platform #5 program, which is funded by the Austrian Development Agency (UNDP Armenia, 2025). Telephone interviews (CATI) were held with 201 women in Lori (70), Tavush (79), and Vayots Dzor (52). The survey asked about land-use competitive advantages, skills and capacities, support needs, and household characteristics. Questions on why land goes uncultivated were only asked to 65 respondents whose land was not cultivated or not fully cultivated.

This evidence has certain limits. The survey covers women only, so it cannot show whether the constraints it documents differ by gender, or whether land farmed by women is cultivated less often than land farmed by men. The survey includes only women who hold land ownership rights, whether as sole owners, co-owners, or both, and includes respondents from only three provinces.

Women are Engaged Across the Entire Cultivation Cycle

Women report near-universal engagement in every phase of land cultivation, from 91% in the preparatory phase, such as acquiring seeds, to 97% after the harvest, in storage, sales and marketing (Table 1). The image of the woman as a marginal “helper” in family farming is not supported by the data: women are full participants, including in its commercial side. The policy question, then, is not how to bring women into agriculture, but what prevents them from getting more economic value from the land and effort they already invest.

Table 1. Women’s engagement in different phases of land cultivation

Phase of land cultivation Engaged
Pre-cultivation phase (e.g., acquisition of seeds and inputs) 91%
Cultivation works proper 95%
Post-cultivation phase (harvest storage, sale, and marketing) 97%

Source: UNDP Armenia (2025). CATI survey, N=201. Question QA6. Translated from Armenian by the authors.

The Productivity Challenge: What Keeps Land from Full Use

Among women whose land is not cultivated or is only partially cultivated, the main reason is limited access to agricultural machinery (37%). Others say they use the land as a hayfield (31%), that cultivation costs outweigh the benefits (22%), that they cannot obtain seeds (20%), or that irrigation water is a problem (17%) (Figure 1). Notably, 9% point to the land’s location near the border, a security constraint specific to Armenia. Apart from hayfield use, nearly all of these causes can be addressed by policy: access to machinery, input supply, irrigation, and the economics of farming.

Figure 1. Reasons for not cultivating land, or not cultivating it fully

Source: UNDP Armenia (2025). CATI survey, subsample N=65. Up to two responses per respondent; totals exceed 100%. End labels show the survey’s combined (first + second reason) figures; components may differ by 1 p.p. due to rounding.

Women’s stated needs closely match these constraints. Asked what support would improve their agricultural activity, 91% named technical assistance (machinery and equipment), 78% financial assistance, 52% infrastructure improvement, and 34% improved market access (Figure 2). Only 1% said they needed no support. In short, the main barrier is not willingness to farm but access to the resources needed to farm efficiently.

Figure 2. Areas of support needed to improve agricultural activity

Source: UNDP Armenia (2025). CATI survey, N=201. Respondents named up to three priorities; totals exceed 100%. Translated from Armenian by the authors.

The Value Challenge: Earning More from the Same Land

The production profile of surveyed women points to a second challenge. The crops women most often grow on their largest plots are wheat (36%), potato (30%), cucumber (25%), beans (24%), grapes (18%), and persimmon (17%) (UNDP Armenia, 2025). Wheat and potatoes earn little per hectare.

According to the estimates by Gevorg Papoyan, the Minister of Economy, a hectare of irrigated wheat yields about 400,000 AMD worth of grain at a cost of about 420,000 AMD, and the government promotes intensive horticulture as the more profitable path (panorama.am, 2024). Helping women farm more efficiently is therefore only part of the task. The other part is supporting a gradual shift toward higher-value production, through better information on profitable crops, improved varieties, irrigation, modern production methods, storage and processing, and links to markets.

This also shows why the 2025 crop support program needs a gender lens. Because many of these women grow wheat and beans, they fall squarely within its target group. Yet women who farm land registered to a husband or his family may be unable to claim the subsidy, so the women the program should reach may be the very ones its rules exclude. And while the subsidy serves food security, on its own it keeps farmers growing crops that earn little; women also need a way into the programs that support higher-value production.

Concluding Remarks and Recommendations

Armenia’s agricultural strategy promises inclusive, gender-equal growth, and its gender strategy promises women’s economic advancement. The evidence assembled here shows that rural women are already doing the work across every phase of cultivation, while the state’s growing agricultural support budget flows through instruments that cannot see them. Adapting existing programs to the constraints women report, and helping women earn more from the land they already farm, would advance gender equality and address one of Armenian agriculture’s central inefficiencies: the underuse of nearly half its arable land.

Our recommendations fall into two groups: raise productivity on the land women already farm and help women earn more from their land. Most recommendations are addressed to the Ministry of Economy and its implementing agencies; those on extension, cooperatives and the gender strategy also concern the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and development partners.

First, open a dedicated route to machinery for women farmers. The machinery leasing subsidy could accept applicants without land collateral and support community machinery pools and service cooperatives that women can use. Uptake should be tracked by sex; if a gap is confirmed, reserved quotas or preferential terms would be justified. The economic case for equal access to inputs is among the most robust findings in development economics: Udry (1996) showed that reallocating productive inputs from men’s to women’s plots within the same household would raise output by about 6%. Theis et al. (2018) show that small-scale technologies raise women’s productivity only when programs address who controls the technology, not merely whether it is available.

Second, design financial instruments that do not depend on collateral, such as credit guarantees, blends of grants and loans, and group lending for women producers. Fletschner (2009) shows that women’s credit constraints are distinct from men’s and shaped by household dynamics rather than farm fundamentals, which means that gender-neutral credit products tend to miss women. Randomized evaluations of expanded microcredit access across six countries find consistent, if modest, increases in business activity and investment (Banerjee et al., 2015), while Ashraf et al. (2010) show that a savings product designed around women’s constraints increased their say in household decisions.

Third, invest in irrigation and rural infrastructure where women report these constraints, and include communities near the border in support that reduces risk. Irrigation problems are among the main reasons women leave land uncultivated (17%), and over half of respondents ask for better infrastructure (52%). Such investment should also be open to women who farm without formal title. Access to irrigation raised household consumption, asset accumulation, and informal insurance in Mali (Dillon, 2011).

Fourth, to help women earn more from their land, bring farm advice to women through women extension agents and digital tools. This means recruiting and training women as advisers in public extension services and building modules for women farmers into digital programs such as FAO’s Digital Villages Initiative in Lori and Tavush, backed by digital literacy training. In a randomized experiment in Mozambique, adding trained women to extension networks reduced the gender bias in the spread of sustainable land management techniques and even led male extension workers to reach more women (Kondylis et al., 2016). BenYishay et al. (2020) find that women are as effective as men at passing on agricultural technologies but are perceived as less capable, so the binding constraint is institutional support, not ability. Digital tools can also lower the cost of delivering such advice considerably (Aker, 2011).

Finally, help women move toward higher-value crops and stronger markets. Support for producer groups, aggregation, shared storage and processing, and links to buyers would help women sell more and keep more of the value, building on initiatives such as UNDP’s Platform #5. Simpler application rules, outreach through women’s groups and technical help in the first seasons would make the state program for intensive orchards and higher-value crops easier for women to use. Membership in banana producer cooperatives in Kenya raised household income substantially (Fischer and Qaim, 2012).

Acknowledgments: The authors thank Zhanna Harutyunyan, Gender Equality Portfolio Manager at UNDP Armenia, for providing access to UNDP Armenia data on women in the agricultural sector.

References

  • Aker, J. C. (2011). Dial “A” for agriculture: a review of information and communication technologies for agricultural extension in developing countries. Agricultural Economics, 42(6), 631–647.
  • Ashraf, N., Karlan, D., & Yin, W. (2010). Female empowerment: Impact of a commitment savings product in the Philippines. World Development, 38(3), 333–344.
  • BenYishay, A., Jones, M., Kondylis, F., & Mobarak, A. M. (2020). Gender gaps in technology diffusion. Journal of Development Economics, 143, 102380.
  • Dillon, A. (2011). The effect of irrigation on poverty reduction, asset accumulation, and informal insurance: Evidence from Northern Mali. World Development, 39(12), 2165–2175.
  • European Union. (2021). Gender Action Plan III: Country-level implementation plan – Armenia.
  • Finport.am. (2025). 39.4 billion drams to be allocated for agricultural programs in Armenia in 2026.
  • Fischer, E., & Qaim, M. (2012). Linking smallholders to markets: Determinants and impacts of farmer collective action in Kenya. World Development, 40(6), 1255–1268.
  • Fletschner, D. (2009). Rural women’s access to credit: Market imperfections and intrahousehold dynamics. World Development, 37(3), 618–631.
  • Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (FAO) (2017). Gender, agriculture and rural development in Armenia: Country gender assessment.
  • Government of the Republic of Armenia. (2019). Strategy of the main directions ensuring economic development in the agricultural sector of the Republic of Armenia for 2020–2030 (Decision No. 1886-L, Annex).
  • Government of the Republic of Armenia. (2025a). State support programme for the cultivation of grain, legume and fodder crops.
  • Government of the Republic of Armenia. (2025b). Strategy and action plan for the implementation of gender policy in the Republic of Armenia, 2025–2028.
  • Kondylis, F., Mueller, V., Sheriff, G., & Zhu, S. (2016). Do female instructors reduce gender bias in diffusion of sustainable land management techniques? Experimental evidence from Mozambique. World Development, 78, 436–449.
  • Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Armenia. (2026). Agriculture.
  • Panorama.am. (2026, February 21). Nearly half of Armenia’s arable land lies uncultivated, analyst warns.
  • Panorama.am. (2024, September 26). Wheat production in Armenia unprofitable, economy minister says.
  • Statistical Committee of the Republic of Armenia [Armstat] . (2024). The demographic handbook of Armenia.
  • Statistical Committee of the Republic of Armenia [Armstat]. (2025). Informal employment, 2024.
  • Tax Code of the Republic of Armenia (2016, HO-165-N), provisions on income from the sale of agricultural products.
  • Theis, S., Lefore, N., Meinzen-Dick, R., & Bryan, E. (2018). What happens after technology adoption? Gendered aspects of small-scale irrigation technologies in Ethiopia, Ghana, and Tanzania. Agriculture and Human Values, 35(3), 671–684.
  • Udry, C. (1996). Gender, agricultural production, and the theory of the household. Journal of Political Economy, 104(5), 1010–1046.
  • United Nations Development Programme. (UNDP) (2025). Survey of women landowners in rural Armenia [Survey conducted by R-Insights LLC].
  • UN Women. (2018). Gender assessment of rural development and agriculture policies in Armenia.
  • World Bank. (2025). Armenia gender data landscape.
  • World Economic Forum. (2025). Global gender gap report 2025.

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. AI tools may have been used in the preparation of this brief. Where used, they were applied responsibly and in accordance with appropriate scientific and ethical standards. The authors and editor remain fully responsible for their respective contributions to the brief.

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.

Enhanced Access to Data Can Reduce the Gender Gap

Posted on March 8, 2024 | FROGEE PROJECT, News

20240308 Closing the Gender Data Gap Image 04

On International Women’s Day, researchers from the FREE Network institutes released the policy brief “Closing the Gender Data Gap” to highlight the crucial role of data in addressing economic inequalities between women and men. The brief explores how improved data collection and access can help reduce the gender gap across labor markets, income, education, pensions, and caregiving responsibilities.

Why Better Data Matters for Gender Equality

In recent decades, progress in documenting historical developments and expanding access to new data sources has significantly improved our understanding of the different economic outcomes experienced by women and men. Today, researchers have deeper insights into:

  • Labor market participation and outcomes
  • Income levels and wealth accumulation
  • Educational investments and pension systems
  • Consumption and household decision-making
  • Caregiving responsibilities and time use

These insights show that better data reduces the gender gap by revealing disparities and helping shape effective policy responses.

Key Findings

The policy brief emphasizes that to effectively design policies and strategies, data must be more accurate, comprehensive, and regularly updated. The researchers outline four critical recommendations:

  • Increase access to digitized information – Governments and public institutions should make more administrative and statistical data available for research.
  • Support funding for surveys – Combining survey data with administrative sources enhances both detail and reliability.
  • Ensure regular data collection – Continuous monitoring allows researchers to measure the impact of major events such as legislation, conflicts, pandemics, or natural disasters.
  • Leverage innovative data sources – Mobile apps, social media, and other digital platforms provide new perspectives on socio-economic trends and gender disparities.

About the Authors

The policy brief “Closing the Gender Data Gap” was authored by:

  • Michal Myck (CenEA)
  • Monika Oczkowska (CenEA)
  • Pamela Campa (SITE)
  • Maria Perrotta Berlin (SITE)
  • Jesper Roine (SITE)

Media Contact

For press or media inquiries, please contact: Maria Perrotta Berlin, Professor at SITE, Phone: 0737332198, Email: Maria.Perrotta [at] hhs.se