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Breakfast Meeting hosted by Edit Herczog MEP

Posted in WIL event reports
29 September 2009 - Brussels, European Parliament

On September 29, the Women in Leadership in the Information Society network, ably hosted by Member of the European Parliament Edit Herczog, convened seven most distinguished new Members of the European Parliament. Together with private sector members of the network, academics as well as the European Commission members who were present there, the discussion expanded from finding specific solutions to encouraging women in entrepreneurship to enabling women to reach top European decision-making positions.

Current Status of Women-Led Businesses

Marina Niforos, Director of Gender Diversity Initiative in INSEAD, and Dunya Bouhacene, Founder of Women Equity Partners, discussed specific figures which showed that there is still much work needed to encourage women to take risks and venture capital to support women-led businesses. The main determining factors are the so-called “pull factors”, in which unemployment or the need for a flexible work schedule are included and then the “push factors”, such as the will to succeed. Nonetheless, the desire to contribute to social welfare is also strong. As The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor shows, high-income European countries exhibit 4 times less female entrepreneurial activity than low or middle-income countries in Europe and Latin America, which means that employment and social networks influence women more than education or household income.

However, the Members of the European Parliament observed that such figures are still incomplete and do not allow scaling all the causes of the low number of women entrepreneurs in different regions of the world, Edit Herczog MEP calling for common action by European academics to contribute to track the missing data, particularly on women’s success rates as entrepreneurs.

According to studies on venture capital firms in France conducted in the past 5 years, women-led businesses are mostly small and medium sized, while only 11% of companies with 100 to 249 employees are led by women. This reality is determined by the risk containment strategies that venture capital firms follow, inducing a “reproduction of the same” attitude and preferring entrepreneurs with experience. Initiatives such as Women Equity Partners is a good place to start reversing these attitudes as well as promoting role models to young girls that would determine them to become young competitive entrepreneurs in today’s market place, as MEPs Antonyia Parvanova and Kinga Goncz observe.

In addition, as an experienced entrepreneur,Aino-Maija Fagerlund, CEO of Frends Technology, explained, to gain venture capital firms’ trust, women should “speak the same language” as them, which means meeting the VCs’ expectations to support highly-educated and self-confident entrepreneurs. Aino-Maija emphasized the need to attract women’s talent in ICT in particular, and in leadership in general. Particularly in high tech sectors, much effort is required to attract talent and, as the Members of the European Parliament observed, this issue should be addressed through educational programs which encourage young girls to build abilities for working in the domains of the future, such as ICT or renewable energies.

Call to Action for Supporting Women’s Access to Leading Positions

Supported by the MEPs, the group has identified three action points that the women from the private sector and academics can advance, in a call to achieve gender parity in the European Commission. Even though Europe has considerable potential to attract women in the highest forums, with women counting for almost 60% of all higher education graduates, the proportion of women in the EU Commission whose term is just ending was of only 30%. In search of a role model that can inspire young women to picture themselves as talented leaders, a new gender balanced Commission could play a crucial role in addressing solutions to offer equal opportunities and leadership opportunities, such as:

• Facilitating access to a learning environment in science and research for young girls through specific scholarship schemes;
• Enabling funds for European universities and research institutions to collect data and expand studies on women in entrepreneurship;
• Supporting the growth of women-led businesses through established quota policies in public procurement.

Tags: EU Commission, Gender diversity, Member of European Parliament, Women Entrepreneurship, Edit Herczog

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