Women's Leadership in SMEs: Gaps and Opportunities
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Anastasia de Santos (Moderator)
United States Agency for International Development
Caren Grown
United States Agency for International Development
Elena Bardasi
The World Bank
Meg Jones
International Trade Centre
USAID is launching the "Growing Economies Through Women's Entrepreneurship" seminar series to delve deeper into the constraints women face in owning and managing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries. The series will also discuss innovative interventions that can remove those constraints and research on what makes them work. Please join our panel as they kick off the series by framing the conversation around what we already know, what the field is doing in this area, and what more needs to be done.
Caren Grown of USAID will start by framing gaps and opportunities in what has been done in women's leadership in SMEs by USAID and other donors. Elena Bardasi of the World Bank will look at strengths and weaknesses around the impact evaluation literature on entry and growth for women’s entrepreneurship in developing countries. Meg Jones of the ITC will underline the Women in Trade programme, which includes support for trade promotion agencies and women business or industry organizations to discuss national export strategies. Anastasia de Santos will then moderate a discussion among panelists and the audience, both in-person and via webinar.
Before the seminar, browse the related resources on the right to learn more about what's happening in this field. Don't forget to answer the short poll in the sidebar. Your feedback will help us shape this series and plan future activities.
Presenter Bio(s):
Caren Grown is Senior Gender Advisor in the Bureau of Policy, Planning and Learning, where she leads USAID’s efforts to integrate gender equality and female empowerment throughout the agency’s policies and programs. Dr. Grown is on leave as Economist-In-Residence at American University, where she also co-directed the Program on Gender Analysis in Economics. Formerly, she was Senior Scholar and Co-Director of the Gender Equality and Economy Program at The Levy Economics Institute at Bard College and Director of the Poverty Reduction and Economic Governance team at the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW). She is the author of several books on gender issues in trade, public finance, and development, and her articles have appeared in World Development, Journal of International Development, Feminist Economics, Health Policy and Planning, and The Lancet.
Elena Bardasi is Senior Economist in the Gender Unit of the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management network at the World Bank. Her current work focuses on female entrepreneurship and gender issues in the labor market. She has been writing and publishing on issues related to informal labor markets, time use, female employment, female entrepreneurship, wage differentials, and occupational segregation. She has contributed to The Africa Competitiveness Report and to several Investment Climate Assessments of Sub-Saharan African countries and has recently co-edited a special issue on Female Entrepreneurship in Small Business Economics. Prior to her current position, she was Senior Economist at the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex (UK), working on issues of labor market dynamics, poverty dynamics, poverty in old age, and family policies in OECD countries. Bardasi earned her PhD in Economics from the European University Institute.
Meg Jones is the Women and Trade Program Manager at the International Trade Centre (a joint agency of the United Nations and WTO), responsible for the design and implementation of the multi-year, multi-million dollar program to increase the economic benefits women derive from trade. Jones works with governments, corporations, and institutions to connect buyers to women-owned enterprises and to improve the business environment to foster women’s export success. She is the former Deputy Director of the Evian Group at IMD – a trade think tank. Jones has also worked for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights, prior to which she was on the Australian delegation to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Jones brings with her private sector experience gained from working in the financial markets and in management consulting. She has sat on several boards including the Australia-Swiss Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Organization of Women in International Trade, and was the founding president of Geneva Women in International Trade. Jones holds a Master of International Studies and a Bachelor of Economics (University of Sydney) having studied in Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia and the Netherlands. She speaks English, Japanese and French.
Comments
After a fruitful discussion in the June 8 seminar, some outstanding questions remain. Caren, Elena and Meg will be available to address some of the following questions in coming days. Thanks to all who participated!
Indra Klein (Development Consultant on behalf of U.S. Congressional Budget Office) asks: With regard to enterprise costs, how are associated costs of doing business (training -- initial and continual, inventory control for instance) being presented, especially with regard to ROI? You used the example of coffee wilting disease and how important tree handling is. Do you have data to support how such training positively impacted the enterprise, especially with regard to revenue by crop saved?
Eniola Mafe (Vital Voices Global Partnership) asks: How do we as development intermediaries educate donors to focus on longer term interventions with market linkages rather than just training?
Nour Moghrabi (GIZ EconoWin, Jordan) asks: Is there a difference between service sectors and product sectors in value chain analyses?
Indra Klein (Development Consultant on behalf of U.S. Congressional Budget Office) asks: The associated fees and paperwork for registering businesses play a role in the large number of informal businesses. Are there successful interventions that develop a funding stream to assist women, especially those who have entered in training programs?
Matthew Griffith (Banyan Global in Washington DC) asks: Are there effective strategies for enhancing women’s access to information and knowledge networks? In what ways are women using phones and other technologies to enhance these networks, and what have been the results?
Jennifer Bubke (International Organization for Migration) asks: Are there any studies or information on women-owned SME development in areas that experience high emigration rates?
Jennefer Sebstad (USAID's Office of Microenterprise and Private Enterprise Promotion , Washington) asks: You mention women's concentration in more labor intensive industries - do women SMEs, on average, have larger numbers of employees?
Courtney Phelps (Catholic Relief Services, Afghanistan) and Jim Seymour (Pontefract Global Strategies, Rhode Island) ask: Is there research that addresses religious and cultural constraints to growing SMEs? For example, the concept of interest-based loans is not supported by religion; and women are illiterate and barely allowed to handle money, much less engage in higher-level marketing. How are SMEs approached or addressed in these contexts?
The constraints women face in owning and managing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries are ranging from family roles, competition from fellow women in the same business, limited access to capital, inadequate skills and knowledge on management, lack of financial training especially in planning, investments and new technologies, high taxes, operation costs, cost of money, short period of lending and low amount lent by financial institutions. However, recently i conducted a study on lending terms and financial performance of SMEs in Urban centres in Uganda in 2011, I found that cultural factors also constraint their performance in term of assets and working capital. Some times their husband dont give enough support to own and manage theri businesses successfully. Family roles contributed alot with 68% as abig constrain to their business prospect and expansion due to reliance on feeding, food, school fees, rent, clothing and treatment of children resulting to failure to own and manage their businesses.
The innovative interventions that can remove those constraints and research on what makes them work was to introduced friendly working environment for them and sentitize their men to support them in owning the business. Some few women had been successfully due to support from the family by giving them financial resources, time, marketing, connections to good lenders and providing business advice to them where they feel they are ignorance on business issues like taxation, cost reduction, low operation expenses and customer care skills. The use of mobile money has also helped some women to order goods and services instead of them travelling long distances to purchased goods and services. The use of trade credit has boosted their exposure and capacity to create good relationship from creditors since now days most creditors trust women when the supply involves alot of money. Provision of market information by google has also helped to track the market for their products especially agricultural enterprising woemen in rural areas by of phones and cooperatives network in the ditricts. Lastly, we need to open a forum for women to learn new skills for rural women in owning and managing business seperate from family roles, cultural belief, better access to affordable finance and communication skills to boost their capacities to run the business successfully.
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