Entrepreneurship skills can be acquired by individuals in various ways, including through business experience, entrepreneurship education and training, receipt of business advice, and interactions with other entrepreneurs and business professionals. Having entrepreneurship skills does not guarantee business success, but can increase the chances of business survival and growth. Women are less likely to report having entrepreneurship skills than men, and this gap is often due to differences in education and experience. This chapter explores the potential for public policy to support the acquisition of entrepreneurship skills by women. The discussion is illustrated by three policy insight notes from Denmark, Poland, and Tanzania. The notes illustrate a range of challenges for policy makers as well as success factors for implementing effective policy measures.
Entrepreneurship Policies through a Gender Lens
5. Building entrepreneurship skills for women
Abstract
The need for gender-based entrepreneurship education and training
Access to entrepreneurship education and training is an important success factor for entrepreneurship. Much of the work can be laid down in formal education systems, but timely follow-up support is also needed after formal education. Higher education in particular has been shown to increase women’s likelihood of becoming both entrepreneurs and employers (Okten, 2015). Yet, despite their increasingly higher levels of educational attainment, women remain under-represented in entrepreneurship, especially within STEM-based, high-tech and high-growth enterprises. In part, this is due to gender differences in entrepreneurship education and skills (Cheraghi and Schøtt, 2015).
The role of public policy
Public policy has many levers to address barriers in entrepreneurship skills, including entrepreneurship education, training, coaching and mentoring, and business advice (OECD/EU, 2019; 2018). Entrepreneurship training programmes in particular are specifically designed to boost an entrepreneur’s know-how about starting and operating a business. The content tends to focus on business and financial planning, identifying markets and customers, financial and risk management, managing human resources and other areas.
Coaching and mentoring relationships among professional business advisors or experienced entrepreneurs and novice entrepreneurs offer many benefits for building the skills of new and existing entrepreneurs. While some people use the terms coaching and mentoring synonymously, coaching refers to short-term relationships that seek to address a specific challenge faced by business owners, while mentoring is often a long-term relationship that has a greater focus on individual development. The most important success factor for entrepreneurship coaching and mentoring is the quality of the match between the inexperienced entrepreneur (i.e. coachee/mentee) and the experienced entrepreneur (i.e. coach/mentor). Most coaching and mentoring programmes for women entrepreneurs in OECD countries use interviews to ensure that the needs of the coachee/mentee are aligned with the experience of the coach/mentor.
The provision of business advice – often through women’s enterprise/entrepreneurship centres (WECs) – has become a relatively common practice in OECD countries. This type of business support offers both general and tailored training geared to the specific needs of individual entrepreneurs to help them overcome the challenges of start-up and obstacles to sustaining and growing their businesses. WECs also often assist women entrepreneurs in securing start-up financing and other business development services.
As noted in Chapter 4, a core question for governments is whether to facilitate the acquisition of entrepreneurship skills by women through better access to mainstream programmes for the whole population or through dedicated and tailored programmes for women. Tailored programmes have been shown to be more effective than generic, mainstream measures because they address specific needs but they are typically costlier to develop and deliver (OECD/EU, 2013).
Lessons from the policy cases
The three policy insight notes in this section highlight not only the benefits of offering gender-focused entrepreneurship education and training to facilitate women’s entrepreneurship, but a need to expand such provisions. The notes draw attention to problems with the effectiveness of many existing entrepreneurship skills policies and programmes for women, often due to ill-informed design, uncoordinated delivery or duplicative programming. They also point to the issue of general education choices by women that do not match well with the skills base needed to pursue entrepreneurial careers.
Most of the policies and programmes discussed in these notes are generic and not contextualised to particular geographical settings or sectors. This is shown to be problematic in countries where women face additional barriers due to prevailing cultural and societal norms and resulting expectations. Policies and programmes that fail to acknowledge these differences or treat women entrepreneurs as a homogenous group, are less effective. These points are illustrated among small rural businesses that are unable to access appropriate supports, and among women entrepreneurs operating in the informal economy. The reflections provide evidence of policies without programmes. In some countries such as Tanzania, women-focused entrepreneurship policies in relation to education and skills have been designed by government, but corresponding policy measures have not yet been implemented.
This section also highlights examples of women-focused initiatives that appear to be having a positive impact. For example, Poland’s Foundation for Female Entrepreneurship is a comprehensive support programme providing entrepreneurship skills and mentoring targeted at young women at the business start-up phase.
Collectively, the policy insight notes in this chapter point to the following key policy takeaways:
1. Entrepreneurship education needs to start early and cover all disciplines. Starting early, for example in primary school, is important so that young girls understand that entrepreneurship is a viable career option and that young girls gain confidence, skills and experience to identify and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities. Entrepreneurship education is important across all discipline areas, but particularly in those areas dominated by women, such as the Humanities, that may not typically lend themselves to entrepreneurial activity.
2. Entrepreneurship education and training programmes must respond to context and variety among women entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship skills development programmes must respond to the specific skills needs of different types of women entrepreneurs and the different types of sectors in which they operate. The policy insight notes in this section show that “one size does not fit all.”
References
Cheraghi, M. and T. Schøtt (2015), “Education and training benefiting a career as entrepreneur”, International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship, Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 321-343, http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/IJGE-03-2013-0027.
Foss, L. (2017), “Revisiting Research on Gender in Entrepreneurial Networks”, in C. Henry, T. Nelson and K.V. Lewis (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Global Female Entrepreneurship, Abington: Routledge, pp. 214‒232.
Hanson, S. and M. Blake (2009), “Gender and Entrepreneurial Networks”, Regional Studies, Vol. 43, No. 1, pp. 135‒49.
Henry, C., H. Lawton Smith, V. Meschitti, L. Foss and P. McGowan (2020), “Networking, gender and academia: An ecosystems approach” in H. Lawton Smith, C. Henry, H. Etzkowitz and A. Poulovassilis (eds.), Gender, Science and Innovation: New Perspectives, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Minniti, M. (2017). “Female Entrepreneurship, Role Models and Network Externalities in Middle-Income Countries”, in C. Henry, T. Nelson and K.V. Lewis (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Global Female Entrepreneurship, London: Routledge, pp. 197‒213.
OECD/European Union (2019), The Missing Entrepreneurs 2019: Policies for Inclusive Entrepreneurship, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/3ed84801-en.
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.
Ökten Hasker, C. (2015), “Female entrepreneurship in Turkey: patterns, characteristics, and trends”, Washington, D.C.: World Bank Group, http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/952081479279116824/Female-entrepreneurship-in-Turkey-patterns-characteristics-and-trends.