As NY1 continues to mark Women's History Month, NY1’s Jeanine Ramirez reports on the entrepreneurship gap. The number of women-owned businesses has risen steadily in the city over the last decade, with the biggest growth in Brooklyn. But there's still a significant gender divide.

“We fry in Bed-Stuy” is the slogan for this artisinal doughnut shop on the corner of Franklin and Lafayette Avenues. It features non-traditional flavors like hibiscus and passion fruit.

Fany Gerson calls her shop Dough. But making the dough hasn't been easy for this graduate of culinary school. Turning her passion for a pastry into a successful retail store has been a challenge, she says especially as a woman in a male-dominated industry.

"You don't have a lot of guidance. You don't have a lot of direct peers that you can look to,” said Gerson.

A new study by the city shows that women entrepreneurs lag behind men in running successful businesses. Men own 1.5 times the number of small businesses as women. Men employ more than three times the number of workers and make revenues on average that are 4.5 times those of women business owners.

"What we found is that challenges that women entrepreneurs face include a lack of access to capital and so loan approval rates for women-owned businesses are 15 to 20 percent lower than that of men-owned businesses. There are also challenges in terms of access to knowledge and training and also to access to networks,” said Small Business Services Commissioner Maria Torres-Springer.

To address the disparity, the city launched Women Entrepreneurs NYC, known as WE NYC. Gerson now sits on its advisory panel.

The goal is to roll out 5,000 female entrepreneurs across the city over the next three years, providing free services, training and resources to start or grow their businesses.

"We believe that when you do that, when you invest in women, you're also investing in their families, in their communities and really in the city's economy,” said Torres-Springer.

"I hope I can guide in some way or just help, put a little seed of what I wish I would've had when I started out,” said Gerson.

By whipping up the economic potential of women, Gerson aims to help close the city's entrepreneurship gender gap.