[Index]
FACT SHEET 4 |
Geneva, 15 December
2004 |
Women’s Self-employment
and Entrepreneurship in the UNECE Region
Regional Preparatory Meeting
for the 10-year Review of Implementation of
the
Beijing Platform for Action
Geneva, Switzerland, 14-15 December 2004
Women’s self-employment is one of the
avenues to improve women’s employability
as defined by the Beijing Platform for Action.
Region specific recommendations were included
into the agreed conclusions from the Regional
Meeting on the 5-year Review of Implementation
of the Beijing Platform. During the last ten
years there was a substantive increase in
women’s self-employment in all countries
of the UNECE region as a result of new policy
measures. Progress varied by subregion and
country. Most progress has been made in North
America. In the United States the number of
women-owned businesses grew by 14 per cent
in the last five years, compared with the
average growth of 7 per cent for all businesses.
The share of women’s
entrepreneurship increased in many countries
of Western Europe. There was also progress
in countries of Eastern Europe and CIS, where
women’s self-employment is an important
element of poverty reduction. Challenges remain
regarding access to finance, information and
networks, markets and training. Support to
women’s self-employment needs more attention
in the context of employment and SME policy.
Good practices in many UNECE countries could
contribute to effective policy on self-employment
of women and women’s entrepreneurship.
The note is based on the UNECE publications
Women’s Entrepreneurship in Eastern
Europe and CIS countries (2003) and Access
to Financing and ICT for Women Entrepreneurs
in the UNECE Region (2004).
Some Data
Across the 55-country UNECE
region, trends related to women’s self-employment
vary considerably. In some countries, women-owned
enterprises have emerged as the most dynamic
segment of the SME sector.
- In the United States, the growth rate
of women-owned firms in 2002 was roughly
twice the national average, and nearly
half of all US businesses are at least
50 per cent women-owned.
- In Canada, the number of women entrepreneurs
increased 208 per cent between 1981 and
2001, compared with a 38 per cent increase
for men (Statistics Canada 2003).
- In the United Kingdom 6.5 per cent
of all working age women in employment
are self-employed.
- In the EU, 70 per cent of self-employed
women operate businesses that employ 5
or fewer people. (Statistics in Focus
11/2002).
- Of the 1750 projects funded by NOW
(New Opportunity for Women) across Europe
between 1994 and 1999, over half addressed
business creation.
- In Canada only 17 per cent of self-employed
women earn more than 17,000 Canadian dollars,
as compared to 42 per cent of self-employed
men (Statistics Canada 2003).
- In the transition countries of Central
and Eastern Europe and the CIS women’s
economic position has deteriorated due
to the downsizing of the public sector,
rising unemployment rates and greater
job insecurity, and the dismantling of
state social protection systems.
Barriers and key
challenges for self-employed women
Women’s
under-representation among the self-employed
must be understood in the context of the barriers
they face in starting and growing their businesses.
Chief among these barriers are difficulties
in accessing finance, information and networks,
markets, and training. These barriers also
have a gender-specific dimension because of
the influence of past and current social and
cultural norms and the structural inequalities
created by these norms. Such inequalities
not only intensify the effects of existing
barriers on women, but also create additional,
gender-specific barriers, such as: access
to finance, access to information and networks,
access to markets and training.
A key challenge facing policy
makers concerns how to ensure that policy
measures effectively identify and reach self-employed
women, given the small size and relative isolation
of their businesses. This challenge is particularly
important given that those women most difficult
to reach, such as poor micro-entrepreneurs
in the informal sector, are likely to be those
in most need of support. A second, and equally
important, policy challenge involves the need
to develop strategies that effectively address
gender specific barriers faced by self-employed
women in the broader context of social and
cultural norms. This requires the mainstreaming
of a gender perspective into structures, institutions,
and policies related to self-employment and
SMEs. At the same time there may be a need
to develop special programmes addressing the
gendered nature of the constraints facing
self-employed women, and that provide services
and access to resources in a gender-sensitive
format.
Selected cases of
good practice
Good practice cases in supporting
women’s self-employment are implemented
by national, regional, and local governments
as well as civil society in various countries
in the UNECE region. Each example addresses
one or more aspects of gender specific barriers
highlighted in Part I illustrating how women
could improve their access to finance, to
information and networks, to markets, and
to training, as well as overcome the traditional
social and cultural norms. These examples
also show the roles of different actors as
well as the possibilities for collaboration
across the public, private, and non profit
sectors towards supporting and promoting self-employed
women. The list of good practices includes,
among others:
-
The NUTEK (Swedish
business development agency) with
the accent on the women’s access
to information about self-employment;
-
Programme of women
professional promotion (Slovenia)
concentrated on the access of women to
information;
-
“Parita,
Occupazione, Econolia” (Italian
initiative funded by NOW) linked
to the women’s educational background
and gender segregation of the education
system;
-
“Home work
for women” and related local government
programmes in St. Petersburg (Russian
Federation) with support of home
workers;
-
The Institute
for Social and Economic Development ISED
(United States), focused on the women’s
access to finance: the development of
partnerships with commercial lending institutions;
-
Women Entrepreneurs
Support Association (WESA) (Kyrgyzstan)
addressed to the inequalities that contribute
to women’s difficulties in accessing
finance;
-
Bosnian Women’s
Economic Network (BNEW) improving
self-employed women’s ability to
network and to access information in a
post-conflict setting;
-
Central Asian Crafts
Support Association (CACSA) facilitates
women’s access to markets by creating
forward and backward linkages among businesses
etc.
Why to support women
entrepreneurs?
The range of strategies for
promoting women’s self-employment outlined
in this section reflects the diversity among
self-employed women and their needs across
the UNECE region. It also underlines the differences
among stakeholders in their approaches to
promoting women’s self-employment, and
the differences among the rationales upon
which these approaches are based.
- The growth approach emphasizes women
as an untapped source of growth for the
economy as a whole. This approach is dominant
in the United States and Canada.
- The “job creation” rationale,
common among European Union Member States,
links self-employment and entrepreneurship,
particularly among women, to broader strategies
to combat unemployment.
- The poverty alleviation rationale emphasizes
self-employment as an economic survival
tool for poor women and their families.
And finally, efforts to promote women’s
entrepreneurship can stem from a commitment
to increase women’s empowerment.
Because these rationales
reflect different policy priorities, they
can lead to different approaches in the implementation
of policies to promote women’s entrepreneurship.
When each stakeholder focuses narrowly on
one approach, without coordinating its efforts
with those of other actors, gaps can emerge,
resulting in policies that do not effectively
reach all women with appropriate services.
For example, active labour market policies
in many EU countries encourage self-employment
based on the “job creation” rationale,
but these programmes are often under-utilized
by women. Approaches based on the “economic
growth” rationale may focus primarily
on formal sector entrepreneurs with larger
enterprises, with the result that the women
most in need (for example low income micro-entrepreneurs)
are more likely to fall through the cracks.
In contrast, many NGO-based programmes to
support women’s self employment target
poor and vulnerable women. But without strong
linkages to the government actors and decisionmakers
who set the economic policy agenda, such exclusively
“poverty alleviation” based approaches
may serve to further isolate poor and marginalized
women, instead of helping them to integrate
into the larger economic system. Three key
challenges emerge with respect to improving
support for women’s self-employment
on the policy level:
- how to effectively identify
and reach self-employed women,
- how to better integrate a gender perspective
into relevant policy areas, and
- how to better integrate and coordinate
the efforts of different stakeholders.
Institutional aspect
- Efforts to improve linkages across institutions
and among stakeholders with different rationales
for promoting women’s self-employment,
and to facilitate the development of integrated
strategies that address women’s needs
at all three levels.
- Establishing concrete mechanisms and
processes for mainstreaming gender into
SME ministries and their related government
institutions, such as small business development
agencies. Such mechanisms may include the
following:
- Setting concrete targets
for women’s participation in the
business support programmes and policies
implemented by these institutions;
- Establishing and collecting data on
indicators that measure the gender sensitivity
of SME ministry policies and activities;
- Providing gender sensitivity training
for SME ministry staff and for service
providers and the related government institutions,
such as the small business development
agencies.
Tables
Table
1. Growth Rates of GDP and Women’s and
Men’s Employment,
in Selected CEE Countries, the Baltic States,
and the CIS, 1991-2000
Table
2. Share of women in total employment by main
sectors of economic activity
in selected countries, 1994
Chart 1: Share of Women and
Men in Part-time Employment, in selected transition
countries, 2001
For further information, please contact:
Ewa Ruminska-Zimny
Coordinator, Beijing +10 Regional Meeting
United Nations Economic Commission for
Europe (UNECE)
Palais des Nations – Office 329-1
CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Phone: +41 (0) 22 917 16 98
Fax: +41 (0) 22 917 00 36
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.unece.org/oes/gender
References
"Women’s self-employment
and entrepreneurship in the UNECE region”
- Secretariat Note for the Regional Preparatory
Meeting for the 10-Year Review of Implementation
of the Beijing Platform for Action (Beijing
+10) - ECE/AC.28/2004/10
Women’s entrepreneurship in Eastern
Europe and CIS countries (2003) and
Access to financing and ICT for women
entrepreneurs in the UNECE region (2004)
– UNECE publications.
Ref: ECE/GEN/04/N06