We often promote networking and mentoring opportunities here at the Female Founders Forum so it is important that we regularly reflect upon this and make sure the evidence supports what we do. After all, sometimes well-intentioned interventions can be counterproductive.

It seems as though entrepreneurialism is something that needs to be inspired in some people. I’m sure there are some natural-born entrepreneurs who started bake-sales and lemonade stands as children, but these are few and far between. The children of entrepreneurs are more likely to start businesses but this does not seem to be for mostly genetic reasons. Children whose biological parents are entrepreneurs, but are adopted by non-entrepreneurs are half as likely to start a business as children whose biological parents are non-entrepreneurs, but are adopted by entrepreneurs.

This makes sense. Starting a business is daunting. There’s a lot to learn and if you don’t know anyone who has done it, you might not know quite how difficult it may be. People who work with or live in the same neighbourhoods as entrepreneurs are more likely to become entrepreneurs themselves.

The evidence that entrepreneurship has to be inspired is clear but what about female entrepreneurs?

It seems that the degree to which entrepreneurship is contagious depends on how similar one is to the entrepreneur inspiring them. If to start a business you need to see someone else make a success of it, it follows that that person should be relatable in some way.

Girls appear to be more susceptible to this effect than boys. Boys can see male entrepreneurs in the news all the time; Mark Zuckerberg, Sir Alan Sugar and Jeff Bezos are household names. They know that their gender will not hold them back. So if their aunt starts a business that may feel relatable to them. But, more often than not, the profiles of female entrepreneurs are not raised to the same degree as male entrepreneurs. In fact, four out of five teenage girls can’t name any female entrepreneurs. So if their uncle starts a business, that may not feel like something they can do too, but it instead may feel like something that men do.

This shows up in the adoption study I mentioned earlier. If you look at the ungendered data the simple story is that children adopted by entrepreneurs are more likely to pursue entrepreneurship. But if you dig deeper, girls are only more likely to become entrepreneurs if their adopted mother was one. If their adopted father was an entrepreneur this had no impact. Boys were more likely to become entrepreneurs regardless of which parent was an entrepreneur.

Similarly it is not as simple as “people who work with entrepreneurs are more likely to become entrepreneurs.” This effect is stronger the more similar people are to each other. This is true if they are the same gender, of similar ages, if they are both parents or both not parents, if they have the same educational background, or if they grew up in the same place.

This means there is a negative feedback loop, with there being fewer female entrepreneurs and therefore fewer opportunities to inspire women to become entrepreneurs.

Mentorship is one way to avoid this vicious circle. Students who were randomly assigned a mentor who was an entrepreneur were 9% more likely to start a business than those assigned a non-entrepreneur mentor.

We also need to do more to raise the profile of potential role-models who are entrepreneurs. We should celebrate female founders in the news, in films and television, and in schools. This means that everyone has a role to play in supporting female entrepreneurs. It cannot be driven by government policy alone.

This is just one of the topics we discuss in our upcoming thought-leadership report which will be launched at the House of Lords on 26 October.

We will be sending invitations out soon, so if you are interested in joining us, you can sign up to become a member of The Entrepreneurs Network. It’s free to join.