ACT4Growth is a European Citizens Initiative, ECI, an instrument set up within the European Treaty and legislative process to enable CITIZENS to have a voice. The campaign requires one million signatures from EU citizens in the next 6 months and has the ultimate objective of promoting gender equality and the advancement of women in Europe. WIL, the European Network for Women in Leadership, is partnering up with ACT4Growth and invites all interested members, emerging leaders and friends to take this opportunity and use their power as a citizen to change policy.

Broadly the initiative aims to spark job creation, innovation and sustainable jobs and ultimately to ensure that women’s entrepreneurship remains on the policy agenda in Europe. Furthermore the campaign also plans to introduce robust measures providing governments with real data about women setting up in business, accessing government funds and support as well as securing financial growth.

Madi Sharma, a successful entrepreneur, has launched the ACT4Growth Initiative to bring to policy implementation the recommendations of an official opinion for the European Economic and Social Committee. Ms Sharma, recently returned from an event in Vilnius where she increased recognition for the importance of female entrepreneurship. A long-time supporter of WIL, Ms Sharma shares the values of WIL in supporting female entrepreneurship and access to capital.

ACT4Growth establishes the link between social development, female entrepreneurship and the economic growth which results from these activities. Furthermore, the initiative stresses the lack of selective measurement of the economic contribution of female entrepreneurs, due to the government’s lapse of baseline information collection. The promotion of female entrepreneurship seems to have fallen off Europe’s enterprise agenda altogether and increasingly since the crisis. The debate about women’s enterprise and whether it needs to be addressed will never be answered until we are able to measure our performance. One of the key measures we are calling for in the ECI is a legislative requirement for European Governments to collect business statistics from a gender perspective. Therefore ACT4Growth is collecting supporters for our campaign, which will hopefully give them a hearing at the European government level.

For more details on the initiative and to sign as a European or non- European citizen, click here