Boosting women’s entrepreneurship and economic leadership

Women’s representation in leadership positions low:

Women’s representation in leadership positions has been on a rise in recent years, but not enough to close the economic opportunity gap.
The World Economic Forum (WEF)’s Global Gender Gap Report 2020 reveals that it will take almost a century to achieve full parity at the current pace.
The disparity is particularly striking in India.

Already high Gender Gap in India is becoming worse in Covid times:

India ranks 112 out of 153 countries on the overall Global Gender Gap Index.
The Covid-19 pandemic is making these disparities worse.
Oxfam India has estimated the economic loss from women losing their jobs during this pandemic at nearly $216 billion.

Need to turn Covid challenge into opportunity for women empowerment:

These trying times provide an opportunity to accelerate the shift towards both greater inclusion of women in the workforce and women-led entrepreneurship.
With work-from-home now widely prevalent, there is an opportunity to deploy technology as the new leveler to strengthen women’s economic participation.
It is heartening to see 34% of Indian IT workforce is women.
They could be further provided access to new skills and blended technologies to move seamlessly in the rising sectors on digital platforms — telemedicine, e-learning and e-commerce.

Need collaborative and concerted action to provide more opportunities to women:

As the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) demonstrate, adopting the gender lens properly and creating a culture to provide more opportunities to women requires collaborative and concerted action.

We need to do the following:

Currently, women constitute around 14% of the total entrepreneur base in India.
We must accelerate both the quantity and quality of entrepreneurship through capacity- building in areas such as branding and marketing as well as facilitate financial and institutional linkages for business support.

Women account just 14% of leadership roles and 30% of professional and technical workers.
We have not made much progress in terms of leadership roles at the chief executive officer (CEO) level.
India has the third-lowest rank in the Asia-Pacific in CEO representation (2%), the second-lowest rank for female chief financial officer (CFO) representation (1%).
Ranked 23 globally, India’s female representation on boards increased by 4.3% over the past five years to 15.2% in 2019. The global average is 20.6%.

Empowerment of women at the micro-enterprise and grassroots levels is very much needed.
Women-owned enterprises can generate over 50–60 million jobs by 2030.
Micro-enterprises led by women face specific issues that require interventions such as digital and financial literacy programmes, handholding for reliable market access, and a greater network of Self Help Groups (SHGs).
Financial reforms must take into account specific issues that women micro-entrepreneurs face.

India should target high level of women’s entrepreneurship:

In the 2019 Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurs, India ranked 52 among the 58 countries.
India must aim to be in the top 10 over the next few years.
There are some developing economies which are already are outperforming their more developed counterparts.

Women business-owners as a percentage of all businesses account for 38.2%, 37.9% and 36% respectively in Uganda, Ghana and Botswana.

With equal access to education, health and financial resources, India can reach one of the highest levels of women’s entrepreneurship.

Conclusion:

Long -existing inequalities and social disparities have created gender disparity in access to resources including food, education and health care.
Industry must use its position to work with all stakeholders in championing and empowering women.
It must be understood that that only economies where women work grow rapidly and countries prosper.

Ayush Prakash