THE GENDER GAP IN MOTIVATION OF EARLY-STAGE ENTREPRENEURS
Introduction. The relevance of the study of the gender gap in the business sector of modern national economies is determined by the increasing importance of women's entrepreneurship in recent years. Women-entrepreneurs make a significant contribution to economic growth, increase of gross domestic product, creation of new vacancies, and reduction of poverty and social exclusion. Therefore, one of the main tasks for the government bodies is to develop and implement the measures that ensure an effective gender policy in the field of business sector development, including the business motivation. The goal of the study is to assess the existing gender gap in modern national economies. In the course of the research, the following tasks were solved: determination of the main variants of the motives of early entrepreneurs involved in creating their own businesses; formation of sets of empirical data describing the share of male and female entrepreneurs in the total number of relevant populations, indicating various options of motives for business creation; development of the models that characterize the motivation of early-stage entrepreneurs. The source of information for assessing the gender gap for the four motivation options were the data provided in the Global entrepreneurship monitoring project, based on a survey of more than 2000 early-stage entrepreneurs in each of the 50 countries. Results. In the course of economic and mathematical simulation, the density functions of the normal distribution were developed. The result of the computational experiment was an assessment of the values of indicators that characterize the existing gender gap in the following four options for motivating the start-up entrepreneurs-men and women: changing the world for the better; improving the well-being and getting higher incomes; continuing the family tradition; the need to earn a living. As a result, the average values and ranges of changes in the gender gap indicators were established, and the countries with high and low values of indicators were identified. A comparative analysis of the values of indicators for Russia and foreign countries was carried out. Conclusion. The obtained research results have a certain novelty and originality, they have a certain theoretical and applied value. The proposed indicators and their calculation models can be used in justifying the business development programs by the government, regional and municipal authorities. The results of calculations are of interest to entrepreneurs, including the first-time entrepreneurs.