Vivek Wadhwa, visiting scholar in UC Berkeley's School of Information notices that a lot of online posts about women entrepreneurs tend to accept the notion that women are less likely to run startups because they have different responsibilities than men (he points to this TechCrunch post as an example).  He thinks this line of thinking is framed by people looking closely at the startup culture of Silicon Valley.  When we expand our view to startups across the country, even of tech startups, Wadhwa notes that many of the stereotypes of entrepreneurs get broken down.  For example, after studying 649 different tech startups, Wadhwa's research team found that the average age of tech company founders is 39-40--not the early 20s.  And, he writes, "there was almost no difference between men and women company founders."

Both groups had an equally strong desire to build wealth; wanted to capitalize on business ideas; were attracted to the culture of startups; had long-standing desire to own their own company; and were tired of working for others. There were, however, slight differences between the encouragement that women received from co-founders and what men received; and women received slightly more funding than men did from business partners.

Equally importantly, we found no difference in life circumstances between men and women founders. Their average ages when founding their first companies were the same. Likewise, successful men and women entrepreneurs founded their first companies when they had similar numbers of children living at home, though men were more likely than women to be married.

But there is certainly an imbalance between the sexes entering high-tech fields, and that imbalance is increasing over time. The proportion of women studying computer science decreased from 37 percent in 1985 to 19 percent today, according to the National Science Foundation. The imbalance stems from the lack of encouragement that girls receive from their parents to study mathematics and science, and escalates when they join the workforce and receive discouragement. Only one percent of high-tech startups have a woman CEO; there are almost no women in the ranks of chief technology officers.

Marital status when starting business

Read Men and women entrepreneurs: Not that different here.