The MENA-OECD Working Group on SME Policy, Entrepreneurship and Human Capital Development met on 17 July 2012 in Rome Italy. The meeting was hosted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and co-chaired by Italy and Tunisia. Session two on “Policies to support women’s entrepreneurship” was chaired by Ambassador Birgitta Holst-Alani, Director, Swedish Institute Alexandria, and addressed by Nicola Ehlermann-Cache, OECD Senior Policy Analyst, Ghada Darwish, Board Member of the Egyptian Junior Business Association, Dahlia El Hawary, Advisor for Private Sector Development Issues at the Egyptian Ministry of Investment, Hatem El Kouche, Director of SME Support at the Tunisia Ministry of Industry, Energy and SMEs and Soukeina Bouraoui, Executive Director of the Centre of Arab Women for Training and Research (CAWTAR). The session featured discussions on the current state of women’s entrepreneurship in the MENA region, barriers to its development, and potential avenues for action to overcome such barriers. The below summarises key points emerging from the discussions.

Current levels of women’s entrepreneurship low in the region

Participants underlined that women’s entrepreneurship levels in the region are the lowest in the world, despite improvements in female educational attainment rates, which sometimes exceed those of men. Regarding the characteristics of women entrepreneurs, it was noted that self-employed women are less likely than their male counterparts to employ other workers.

Despite a political will to support women’s entrepreneurship, barriers remain

Participants noted that in many countries, there is a clear political will to promote women’s entrepreneurship. For example, all MENA governments have ratified the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. There is also increasing endorsement of reforms to support private sector development, which could help accelerate women’s entrepreneurship development. It was, however, noted that countries have difficulty translating political will into action.

Some of the specific factors identified to explain low levels of women’s entrepreneurship included:

• Women’s lack of prior job experience, as well as high unemployment and a large proportion of unpaid, part time and seasonal work;
• Negative social values attributed to women as economic actors, and other social constraints such as challenges balancing work and family;
• Business climate issues such as difficult business registration procedures or rampant corruption, which disproportionately affect women;
• Insufficient financing options for women who have graduated from the micro-finance to the commercial finance stage;
• In some countries, large numbers of women who not have national identity cards and therefore cannot formalise their businesses or access finance (4 million women in Egypt).

Potential avenues for accelerating women’s entrepreneurship development

Participants offered suggestions for potential means to improve the environment for women’s entrepreneurship. They included:

• Tailored programmes to improve women’s access to finance such as:
  • Government subsidised loans which do not require collateral (this would benefit women, who frequently do not own collateral);
  • Training women to improve their financial literacy and entrepreneurial skills;
  • Hiring female loan officers in banks;
  • Gender-sensitisation training of bank employees; and
  • The establishment of a fund dedicated solely to supporting women-led businesses.
  • Improving women’s access to information, for example on initiatives which offer business development services or mentoring;
  • Improving co-ordination and exchange of information between donors, national institutions, the business community and other actors;
  • Efforts to portray entrepreneurs in a positive light in the media;
  • Examination of franchises that are accessible to women: this information could be communicated to the businesswomen’s community to inform them of potential franchising opportunities;
  • Establishment of a system by which foreign companies report on how many women they employ (to put pressure on them) à this could have downstream benefits on local SMEs owned by women and create a virtuous circle in the supply chain;

Improvements to the legal environment affecting businesses, to reduce policy uncertainty and corruption, which would have important effects on overall entrepreneurial performance, including for women.

UFFP will be attending the next Women’s Business Forum Annual Conference in Paris,21-22 November 2012, Paris so until then stay tuned !