This paper contributes to the wider efforts of policy makers, experts and practitioners to maximise the contribution of women into the national, regional and global economic growth and competitiveness in the EU neighbouring countries. It focuses on actions that can support women’s participation in entrepreneurship. The paper reviews available international evidence on the potential benefits that targeted policies and support measures can bring to both national economies and women themselves.
Further, the paper analyses obstacles and policy bottlenecks preventing broad participation of women in business venture creation. It makes its point regarding an imperative role of entrepreneurship as a vital career and employment choice for women, as well as a pivotal policy priority both in the EU neighbourhood and in the countries of the European Union.
Finally, the position paper emphasises the fundamental importance of human capital as the main entry point into designing policies conducive to women’s employment and entrepreneurship, and reviews both existing and recommended policies and actions promoting women’s entrepreneurship training and support. Thus, the paper aims at setting up a frame for ETF’s work around its core functions in conveying EU external relations’ policies, promotion of capacity for evidence-based policy making, policy analysis and evaluation in the EU partner regions, as well as boosting social partnership, networking and peer learning around their human capital development strategies.
The paper builds on ETF’s experience of support to women’s entrepreneurship alongside its broader activity facilitating development of entrepreneurship in the partner countries. Joint institutional engagements with the European Commission, OECD and EBRD in the implementation of policy assessments under the Small Business Act for Europe in 23 countries of South-East Europe and Turkey (SEET), Eastern Partner countries and the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean (SEMED) region provided ETF with a unique overview of the current state of play on the entrepreneurial side of the partner economies and have become the foundation for closer partnership on enterprise skills development and promotion of lifelong entrepreneurial learning1. ETF has also supported women’s entrepreneurship through career guidance and gender mainstreaming in the SEMED region and implemented analyses of education, training and employment policies and practice for women under the “Women and Work” project.
In March 2013, ETF published a Policy Brief on Women’s Entrepreneurship “Training for women entrepreneurs: an imperative for growth and jobs “2 which aimed at presenting a short overview of ETF’s involvement and interest in supporting women’s entrepreneurship as an economic policy issue of primary importance for growth and competitiveness and a catalyst of employment in the ETF partner countries. The policy brief emphasises the need for governments and social partners to invest in targeted support of women’s entrepreneurship, and first of all, in ensuring availability of quality training and mentoring support. The brief also calls for application of evidence based approach to development, monitoring and evaluation of entrepreneurship policies and highlights the critical lack of reliable statistics on implementation of government policies vis-à-vis women entrepreneurship.
In the course of recent years, it became evident that in response to the growing demand from the key national stakeholder groups and peer international organisations, ETF has to continue – and expand – its engagement and ensure availability of a sound expert advice on support of women’s entrepreneurship. The discussions with policy makers, experts and social partners have demonstrated the need for producing a more elaborated and systematised analysis of available evidence and an overview of recommendations on policy and practice on women’s entrepreneurship training and support applicable to the needs of the ETF partner regions. General lack of reliable arguments and analysis of distinctive characteristics of women entrepreneurs as a target group, as well as a clear definition of their specific needs and targeted instruments of policy interventions is another reason why ETF has prepared this position paper. The paper focuses on all forms of training support and skills development for women’s entrepreneurship in a wider sense, including mentoring and coaching as an integral part of life-long entrepreneurial learning approach and development of key competences. This paper attempts to answer the following questions:
- Why women’s entrepreneurship is important and why does it require targeted support?
- What are the key issues about women’s entrepreneurship and what would be their specific support needs?
- What can be done: how can policy makers and practitioners engage the challenges and what ETF can do?
ETF expresses sincere thanks to the research team of the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (Judge School, Cambridge University) led by Dr Shima Barakat, and to her personally, for the valuable insights in investigating into the nature of women’s entrepreneurship phenomena and contributions into joint desk research and literature review in the course of preparation of this Position Paper.
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