According to a new report, there very well may be. Entitled “Women at the Wheel: Do Female Executives Drive Start-up Success?” and conducted by Dow Jones VentureSource, the study found that venture-backed companies with female executives at the helm are more likely to be successful than those where the leadership is predominantly male.

So to all you women out there who are shopping for a business opportunity, distributorship, licensee opportunity or franchise and wondering if you have what it takes to start and grow a business of your own, the answer is a resounding yes! The findings from this study should be a source of inspiration.

Based on a review of more than 15 years of venture-backed company data and executive information in its database, Dow Jones’ researchers compared successful versus unsuccessful companies and how women in leadership roles may have affected them positively at startup and over time. What they found is interesting and, for prospective women executives and business owners in particular, encouraging…

• 1.3% of privately held companies have a female founder, while 6.5% have a female CEO and 20% have one or more high-level executives in the leadership mix.

• The overall median proportion of female executives is 7.1% at successful companies and only 3.1% at unsuccessful ones, meaning there’s little doubt as to the value that women bring to a management team.

• The median proportion of female executives at successful companies in the four largest industry sectors—IT, healthcare, consumer service and business/financial services—is higher than it is in unsuccessful ones.

• Company odds for success increase with more female executives at the VP and director levels.

• The most common positions held by female executives (27%) were within Sales and Marketing.

• Startups with five or more females at the executive level were successful 61% of the time, while only 39% failed.

To learn more about the study’s findings, you can download it by clicking here now!