The successful delivery of women’s entrepreneurship schemes often depends on several factors, including setting appropriate policy objectives and ensuring coherence with other gender policies. It is important to consult with women entrepreneurs during policy design and to build effective partnerships across public actors and with non-government organisations to ensure suitable delivery mechanisms are used. The impact of schemes should be tracked closely and fed back into how the support is designed and delivered. This chapter discusses these issues and presents five policy insight notes from Canada, Czech Republic, New Zealand, Northern Ireland (UK) and Sweden. Each note discusses some of the core questions in women’s entrepreneurship policy, including whether dedicated policies and programmes are needed. Other notes assess approaches to implementing women’s entrepreneurship policy strategies and the potential role of using the private sector to deliver public policy in this area.
Entrepreneurship Policies through a Gender Lens
4. Strengthening the design and delivery of women’s entrepreneurship support
Abstract
Balancing mainstream and dedicated support
One of the central questions policy makers face when designing entrepreneurship support for women is whether to provide better access to mainstream support for all entrepreneurs or to use a tailored and dedicated approach. There are three factors that should be considered when deciding on the approach:
First, governments need to find out if women are aware of existing mainstream support offers and whether they are willing to use them. Although costlier, there is some evidence that women-only programmes are more effective at reaching women because women are more likely to be aware of them and more comfortable participating when they are women-only (OECD/EU, 2018; 2013).
Second, selection and in-take mechanisms used by mainstream programmes can be gender-biased since they may not appropriately account for the different characteristics of businesses operated by women or the specific needs of women entrepreneurs. For example, women are often excluded from growth-oriented support programmes because women-owned businesses are often smaller than those operated by men and operate in low-growth sectors.
Third, governments need to decide if women entrepreneurs need different content in support programmes since they often operate different types of businesses. It can be argued that business needs are gender-neutral but some researchers (e.g. Lougui and Nyström, 2014) argue that personal characteristics and the background of the entrepreneur are more important factors that influence the content of support programmes. Women, on average, tend to have different labour market experiences and different levels of social capital and, therefore, seek support to overcome different barriers.
In response to these issues, policies can pursue a combined approach of improving women’s access to mainstream programmes, addressing the problems identified, and offering complementary dedicated services and programmes for women entrepreneurs.
Defining objectives and targets
Effective women’s entrepreneurship policies and programmes tend to have clearly defined objectives that identify the desired outputs (i.e. what a policy produces) and outcomes (i.e. the conditions that policy seeks to alter) (OECD/EU, 2018; 2013). The process of defining objectives should include setting targets and identifying indicators that can be used to track progress against these targets and to assess the impacts made. A logic model can be used to help policy makers set targets and indicators that align with the desired policy outputs and outcomes. When defining indicators to track the impact of policy, it is important to avoid confusing outputs and outcomes since policy can only directly impact outputs. Indicators should be consistent over time and to the extent possible, use data that can be accessed without a long time lag.
The process of defining policy objectives and targets should include a consultation process that seeks inputs from a range of women’s entrepreneurship stakeholders, including women’s organisations, women’s business associations, women entrepreneurs, educational institutions, as well as relevant ministries, departments, agencies, local authorities and non-governmental support organisations working with women. It can also be helpful to consult with experts in the field of inclusive entrepreneurship and to draw on the knowledge generated from past women’s entrepreneurship policy experiences and those in other countries. Ultimately, the objectives should be consistent with, and linked to, broader labour market policy objectives for women.
Increasing programme outreach and accessibility
Outreach is an important component of effective policy delivery since common reasons for low take-up of support among women entrepreneurs include a lack of awareness about the available support and an inappropriate programme interface.
Communication and outreach messages need to be clear and jargon-free, since many of the targeted women typically have little experience in entrepreneurship. It is most effective to deliver these messages through communication channels that will reach women, including dedicated networks and organisations. Outreach for many entrepreneurship programmes now occurs online, so it is important to ensure that the messages are disseminated through appropriate online platforms that are used by the different target groups of women.
It is also important to ensure that frontline staff on entrepreneurship programmes are sufficiently qualified to engage with women entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship support agencies need to recruit people who have experience in working with different profiles of women entrepreneurs (e.g. part-time businesses, innovative STEM businesses) to ensure that they understand the range of challenges faced and that support is relevant. They can also provide gender awareness training to frontline staff, which often places a strong emphasis on communication skills. An additional consideration is that trust with scheme participants can be built more quickly when at least some members of frontline staff are women.
Policy makers can have an influence on this by placing conditions on the programmes and support organisations they fund. For example, funding conditions can require that a certain proportion of programme staff is from the target group, and/or that they receive training in working with the target group.
Another option for ensuring quality support delivery is certification of support providers. A small number of countries and regions offer certification programmes that ensure that support is of a high quality and relevant for women entrepreneurs. Such certifications can signal to potential clients that the support offered is relevant and that frontline staff is experienced in working with women entrepreneurs.
Lessons from the policy cases
The policy insight notes in this section tackle many of the broad questions in the field of women’s entrepreneurship policy, notably whether women entrepreneurs should have dedicated public support or not. This core question is considered from local contexts in the notes from the Czech Republic, New Zealand and Northern Ireland, UK. Another pair of policy insight notes examine and discuss policy delivery. The note from Canada examines approaches to delivering on the relatively new Women Entrepreneurship Strategy, while the note from Sweden covers another important issue – is it more effective to deliver support directly through public institutions or through public sector delivery agents?
Collectively, the notes in this chapter point to the following takeaways to improve policy making to enhance women’s entrepreneurship:
1. Strong framework conditions are a prerequisite for successful women’s entrepreneurship. In New Zealand, for example, women’s entrepreneurship is strong relative to many other countries despite a relatively under-developed women’s entrepreneurship policy.
2. Coherence is needed between women’s entrepreneurship policies and other policies. The importance of comprehensive (joined up) policy is illustrated in the case of the Czech Republic, where policies that encourage “re-familisation” have a negative influence on women’s entrepreneurship because they encourage a return of women to full-time household responsibilities and an erosion of maternity allowances.
3. Success in women’s entrepreneurship policy can depend on having a strong delivery system. The policy insight note from Canada illustrates an area of fragility in programme eligibility criteria. While programmes are strong in specifying women-led enterprises they pay less attention to differences in the challenges faced by different types of women-owned businesses.
References
Lougui, M. and K. Nyström (2014), “What obstacles do entrepreneurs encounter?”, Journal of Entrepreneurship and Public Policy, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 275 – 291.
OECD/EU (2018), “Policy Brief on Women’s Entrepreneurship”, OECD SME and Entrepreneurship Papers, No. 8, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/dd2d79e7-en.
OECD/The European Commission (2013), The Missing Entrepreneurs: Policies for Inclusive Entrepreneurship in Europe, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264188167-en.