Cyprus Ranks Last in EU for Women in Management as Dublin Forum Hunts Fixes

Cyprus ranks last in the European Union for women in management, a figure that framed three days of debate at the SME & Clusters Assembly 2026 in Dublin from November 2 to 4. Cypriot women joined entrepreneurs, policymakers and business experts from across Europe to examine what holds women back from building companies.

The number that matters: Cypriot women are only half as likely as men to be starting or running a young business, despite years of official promotion of entrepreneurship on the island. The gap is not confined to Cyprus. Women make up only 33 per cent of business owners across the EU, though they are roughly half of the population.

What did the Dublin assembly actually do?

The Women in Business session ran on Tuesday at the Convention Centre Dublin. Participants split into smaller working groups to compare experiences across countries and to consider what governments, investors and business organisations might do differently.

Cypriot participants discussed obstacles facing female entrepreneurs with colleagues from other countries. The agenda covered opportunities in different markets and the practical steps needed to help women set up and grow businesses.

The format was deliberately practical. Organisers pushed participants to go beyond naming well-known problems and to consider concrete action — a signal that describing the gender gap, however starkly, is no longer treated as progress in itself.

The session showed that the answer is far more complex than urging women to have more self-belief, a framing that shifts responsibility from institutions to individuals. That claim is easy to state; whether the working groups produced commitments beyond discussion is not recorded in the available material.

Who spoke, and on what evidence?

Three speakers anchored the session:

• Dana Puia Morel, senior policy lead at the European Commission's DG GROW.A.2, bringing the policymaking perspective.
• Brendan Rowan, managing consultant at BluSpecs, representing business consultancy.
• Gerardo de Luzenberger, adjunct professor at the University of Trento and associated with CoCreativeFlow, contributing participatory planning expertise.

The topics ranged from childcare and taxation to investment decisions and artificial intelligence. Participants also addressed the persistent tendency to overlook women when business opportunities arise — an informal barrier that no policy recommendation alone is likely to remove.

The exercise was built around five policy recommendations drawn from a European Commission report published in June. That report examined the barriers facing female entrepreneurs and proposed ways of removing them.

What do the figures say about the wider gap?

The Commission's numbers sketch a structural problem, not a motivational one. Women in the EU are more likely to run smaller businesses, often with no employees at all.

They also remain underrepresented in the sectors that offer the greatest scope for growth and investment. In plain terms: even when women own businesses, those businesses tend to sit where the money and scaling potential are thinnest.

Set against the population share — roughly 50 per cent women against 33 per cent of business owners — the EU is missing a third of the representation it would need for parity in ownership. Cyprus, at the bottom of the management table, has the furthest to climb.

What happens after Dublin?

The assembly ended on November 4. What it leaves behind is a set of five Commission recommendations, a cross-country exchange of experience, and an instruction to participants to move from diagnosis to action.

The test now falls on governments, investors and business organisations named in the Dublin discussions — and on whether Cyprus, the EU's laggard on women in management, converts an annual debate into measurable movement in the figures.