Women as Entrepreneurs: Lessons Unlearned?
2022
Enterprise Research Council

Key findings:
The support landscape for women’s entrepreneurship continues to fail to provide women with required flexible, tailored, best-practice, gender-aware support.
Women entrepreneurs are important, distinct and diverse communities within the wider entrepreneurial population.
Too many women entrepreneurs continue to report actual, or perceived, difficulties with financial intermediaries and wider business support initiatives.
Immediate action must be taken to prevent similarly gendered atrophy of women’s businesses post-Covid as was seen during and after the 2008 Global Economic Crisis.

Policy implications:
Policies and programmes to encourage and support entrepreneurs must recognise their diversity and embed this within their approaches.
A national strategy is required to achieve ratios of UK women owned businesses comparable to ‘best-in-class’ countries.
A clearer route to policy should be developed to translate research evidence into policy action e.g., through an annual Female Entrepreneurship Research and Policy Conference.
Sustained, substantial government support is needed to develop a robust and accessible women’s entrepreneurship support network, locally, regionally and nationally, across all four nations in the UK.
A national framework of support must be developed, built around existing, local, focused, trusted, quality providers.
Gender-disaggregated, annual HM Treasury reporting is essential to ensure that commitments made to provide targeted support result in measurable and impactful outcomes.

The Alison Rose review of female entrepreneurship: Progress report
2022
Alison Rose

Key findings:
The major barriers for women entrepreneurs continue to be inequitable access to, and awareness of funding, inequitable caring responsibilities, lack of enabling entrepreneurship support ecosystems for women.
Caring responsibilities: Women entrepreneurs continue to suffer from the inequitable division of caring work, a situation exacerbated by the Covid pandemic. Women entrepreneurs reported spending 6-10 hours more per week on caring work than men entrepreneurs during the pandemic. Women entrepreneurs were 62% less likely than men to report post-pandemic recovery in their businesses. 44% of women entrepreneurs reported the urgent need for additional childcare support (versus 34% for men).
Enabling entrepreneurship: 68% rise in signatories to HM Treasury’s Investing in Women Code, which requires signatories to a) adopt best practice in supporting female business owners, and b) collect and publish gender disaggregated data to enhance transparency.

Policy implications:
Government should consider how best to support the development of targeted support for women entrepreneurs through public/private partnership working, designated policy support, ministerial buy-in and policy promotion, pan-government and public institution support, transparent funding, outcome measurement and reporting.

The Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurs: How targeted support for women-led business can unlock sustainable economic growth
2022
Mastercard

Key findings:
Women entrepreneurs suffer from: inequitable access to funding and business training; negative gender stereotypes; the inequitable division of unpaid domestic labour and childcare.
(Aotearoa specific): There exists a lack of affordable childcare, which disproportionately affects women

Policy implications:
Gender lens in policy-making is required to ensure equitable outcomes for women entrepreneurs.
Explore the effects of policy in action (are policy intentions resulting in equitable results outcomes?).
Explore why almost four times as many women as men are ‘pushed’ into (necessity) entrepreneurship.
More funding required for good quality, locally-based childcare.

Women, Business and the Law 2022
2022
World Bank Group

Key findings:
Inequitable access to finance and training, negative gendered stereotypes, gendered sectoral segregation e.g., health and social care versus construction, inequitable division of unpaid domestic labour and childcare.

Policy implications:
Implement and enforce gender equality laws.
Support greater legal equality for women.
Developed economies should focus on systemic and structural barriers that result in ongoing inequalities for women.

Women entrepreneurs: Catalyzing growth, innovation, and equality
2022
Citi GPS

Key findings:
Inequitable access to finance (especially Venture Capital), international markets, mentoring, networks, training, cumulative disadvantage for some women e.g., non-Whites, differently abled, refugee women, gendered sectoral segregation e.g., health and social care versus construction, inequitable division of unpaid domestic labour and childcare.

Policy implications:
Legislate for gender equality;
Tackle systemic and structural barriers/biases that lead to inequitable outcomes for women.
Collect gender disaggregated, internationally comparable data on women entrepreneurs.
Introduce gender-aware procurement policies and practices.
Invest in accessible, gender-aware business training support for women.
Facilitate public policy, private sector, and legislative collaborations to support women’s entrepreneurship.

A Guide to Fostering Women’s Entrepreneurship: Five key actions towards a digital, green and resilient Europe
2021
European Commission

Key findings:
Women entrepreneurs are an underutilised of economic growth, job creation, and social well-being.
Supporting more women into entrepreneurship would improve gender equality, and provide diverse potential solutions and innovations for the green transition and recovery from the pandemic.
Women are under-represented in science and technology (particularly digital technology) – a situation fueled by gender bias and lack of visible role models.
Women entrepreneurs suffer from the inequitable division of unpaid domestic labour and childcare.
The Covid-19 pandemic has adversely affected women’s businesses more than men’s due to their general location in more vulnerable sectors e.g. hospitality, retail and leisure.
More support is needed to encourage women into entrepreneurship – business support and training, gender-specific equality-focused policy interventions, equitable access to finance, visibility of female role models, availability of mentors etc.

Policy implications:
Challenge gendered stereotypes of entrepreneurship.
Develop life-long entrepreneurial learning offerings in schools, Universities and communities covering topics such as: finance, growth/investment readiness, network development, ICT and digital technologies.
Adopt gender-sensitive, multi-agency, pan-regional approaches to promoting and developing women’s entrepreneurship.
Ensure collection of gender-disaggregated, comparable data across regions to build robust, evidence-based policy interventions.
Enhanced visibility of female role models.