Entrepreneurship Policies through a Gender Lens

Australia

By Patrice Braun, Federation University Australia

Naomi Birdthistle, Griffith University

Antoinette Flynn, University of Limerick

Background

Australia is the world’s sixth largest land mass (World Atlas 2020). With over 25 million people (Worldometer, 2020), Australia is ranked fifth among OECD countries for population growth, and among the least densely populated countries in the world (United Nations, 2019). Most of the population congregates along coastal lines, although there are regional towns and rural communities spread throughout the Australian outback. Australia’s Indigenous population, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people represent 3.3% of the total population, 1.5% of which live in remote or very remote areas (AIHW, 2019).

Australia is often referred to as the “lucky country” with a highly developed, high-income economy and uninterrupted economic growth over the past three decades, yet economic growth has not been inclusive. Women are less likely to be in the paid workforce, more likely to work part-time, earn less per week; and retire with less superannuation, compared to men (OECD, 2017). Despite Australia’s adoption of gender transparency measures, the gender pay gap remains at 13.9% (WGEA, 2020) with Australia’s ranking slipping from 39^th to 44^th according to the Global Gender Report (Bosma et al., 2020).

Entrepreneurship is a means to close gender gaps, as evidenced by the fact that women lead 34.8% of Australian businesses (Australian Government Department of Skills, Education and Employment, 2019). In terms of early stage entrepreneurship, 9.2% of female adults are involved in start-ups, compared to 15.3% of males (Steffens and Omarova 2019). Total Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA)1 by gender indicates that female TEA is improving at 8.8%. However, TEA remains substantially below the rates for males (12.3%) (Moyle et al., 2020). At the same time, there has been a rise in the number of Indigenous business owners in the last decade (close to 72%), with women Indigenous business operators increasing from 7.6% in 2006 and women-owned incorporated enterprises increasing by 8.2% (Zuchetti, 2018).

Policy issue: Building a pipeline of women entrepreneurs

Australian entrepreneurs are more likely to be motivated by opportunity than necessity, with women indicating that they seek to make a difference (54.9%) or build wealth (51.1%) over making a living (37%) (Bosma et al., 2020). Even though Australia ranks 14^th in the World Bank, the Ease of Doing Business Index and entrepreneurial ecosystems are maturing, yet public policies and capacity for entrepreneurship remain constraining factors (Bosma et al., 2020). Australia has “a poor pipeline” to entrepreneurship for women as “there is a gender imbalance in the rate of start-ups” (Steffens and Omarova, 2019). A good pipeline to entrepreneurship is, inter alia, when women engage in start-up at the same rate as men, and are as confident that they have the skills to start a business (Aidis and Weeks, 2016).

Australian women entrepreneurs suffer from a lack of connectedness to the start-up ecosystem (Australian Government Department of Industry, Innovation and Science, 2018). In mapping and comparing metropolitan and rural entrepreneurial ecosystems through consultations with enterprising women and service providers, Eversole et al. (2019) confirm that while enterprise supports (e.g. mentoring, advice, training, finance and peer networks) are obtainable, there are issues with accessibility, take-up and appropriateness of resources for women in Victoria and Tasmania. Financial inclusion being crucial for women, the research found a narrow range of financial supports, with a perceived “marked absence of women-specific financial supports” (Eversole et al., 2019: pp. 72). Women in rural areas in particular lacked access to enterprise incubation and acceleration supports, including access to formal support networks. As such, ecosystem supports were deemed to be inadequate and gender-insensitive, and failed to meet the start-up and business needs of enterprising women in diverse geographic settings. Observations suggest the talent-pipeline of women entrepreneurs is insufficient and the Australian start-up ecosystem can be improved.

Acknowledging that women-led start-ups encounter higher barriers to success than their men counterparts due to limited access to capital, networks and resources, in 2018 the Australian Government invested AUD 18 million in the Boosting Female Founders (BFF) financial support initiative (Australian Government Department of Industry, Innovation and Science, 2018). Over three years (2020-23), BFF will match funding investment schemes that seek to stimulate private sector investment in innovative start-ups led by women, and to launch, scale and expand their firms in domestic and global markets (Australian Government Department of Industry, Innovation and Science, 2018). Designed to boost the economy by increasing the diversity of start-up founders, the programme purposively targets Indigenous peoples, migrant, refugee and disabled women entrepreneurs. Given the unconscious bias women often face raising investment capital (Australian Government Department of Industry, Innovation and Science, 2018), it remains to be seen to what extent this programme will increase opportunities for women-led start-ups.

Conclusions and recommendations

While Australia has a comprehensive small and medium-sized enterprise (SME)2 agenda aimed at improving the business operating environment (OECD, 2019), it maintains an ad hoc approach to supporting women entrepreneurs. BFF is the only women-focused entrepreneurship investment fund of its kind. The Australian Government does not support gender-responsive policies such as public procurement for women entrepreneurs, although in 2015 it did initiate an Indigenous procurement policy that provides increased opportunities and growth for Indigenous entrepreneurs (NIAA, 2015).

Nor does Australia collect sex-disaggregated small business census, SME policy or programme data. With women entrepreneurs being under-represented in the Australian start-up ecosystem (Australian Government Department of Industry, Innovation and Science, 2018), there is a clear need to develop more holistic programmes and measures to support women’s talent. Based on international benchmarks and Australia’s talent pipeline performance for women entrepreneurs, the following policy recommendations are advanced.

Recommendations for Australia

• Unlock the potential of Australian women by designing inclusive supports that build entrepreneurial capacity and strengthen the talent-pipeline of women entrepreneurs.

• Acknowledge that Australian women entrepreneurs are a heterogeneous group located across diverse geographic locations and start-up ecosystems, requiring targeted development approaches and supports.

• Increase and widen gender-responsive start-up programmes that boost and measure women entrepreneurs’ participation rates, including access to resources, financial supports, public procurement, and collection of gender-disaggregated data.

References

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Eversole, R., N. Birdthistle, M. Walo and V. Godinho (2019), “Towards a typology of supports for enterprising women: A comparison of rural and urban Australian regions”, in High-growth Women’s Entrepreneurship: Programs, Policies and Practices, Edward Elgar.

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