Welcome to the inaugural issue of Womenable E3 News, a concise quarterly digest that will provide you and other stewards of women’s entrepreneurship with information to 1) educate, 2) enlighten and 3) empower your work on behalf of the women’s business community around the world. Womenable is a new woman-owned enterprise, founded by Julie Weeks, former Executive Director of the National Women’s Business Council and Director of Research of the Center for Women’s Business Research. To learn more about Womenable, visit our web site.

Womenable has recently published a Research in Brief, entitled “The Performance, Progress and Promise of Women’s Business Centers in the United States,” summarizing three complementary research studies published over the past 16 months which focus on the women’s business center program in the United States. This report highlights key findings and provides synthesized analysis and recommendations. Click here to obtain a copy of the report.

The UK government has announced the formation of a national Women’s Enterprise Task Force – an advisory body that will be similar in some ways to the US National Women’s Business Council. During its three-year mandate, the Task Force will be charged with:

• Reviewing and working with the nine Regional Development Authorities to ensure that women's enterprise development is a part of their regional economic strategy;
• Evaluating Women's Enterprise Unit pilots to evaluate and incorporate lessons learned;
• Working with public sector agencies to collect data on the number of women-owned enterprises and on their progress in accessing finance and technical assistance; and
• Focusing on strategies for increasing access to formal sources of capital for women-owned enterprises.

To read the full language of the announcement, which was in the 2005 Pre-Budget report, click on this link and go to Chapter 3, section 3.71. Stay tuned for further news of the formal launch of the task force in the Spring of 2006.

“Global supply chain management” takes on new meaning in a recent article in TIME magazine, "Sisters in Trade," which focuses on how some U.S. women business owners are linking with women artisans in less-developed countries to the benefit of both parties. Profiled in the article is Pauline Lewis, owner of Oovoo Design – and a client of the Women’s Business Center of Northern Virginia.

On January 12, the seventh annual assessment of the state of new business formation – the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report – was issued. A consortium of over 150 researchers in 35 countries participated this year, and once again the project was overseen and coordinated by Babson College and the London Business School.

Over the years this international effort has broadened its investigation of the factors associated with business formation rates, not only looking at differences between countries but within them, by such variables as gender. As we know, while the number of women-owned businesses continues to rise over time, the actual number of women going into business continues to lag men on a per capita basis. Last year, the GEM team issued a special report focused on women’s entrepreneurship.

This year's report adds some additional insights, asking all survey respondents (both those involved in business formation activities and those not involved) four questions to gauge their perceptions of entrepreneurial opportunities:

• do they personally know someone who has started a business within the past two years;
• do they personally see good start-up opportunities in the next six months in their environment;
• do they feel they have the required knowledge and skills to start a business; and
• do they feel that fear of failure would prevent them from starting a business.

On all four of these measures, there was a significant gender gap. Say the report’s authors, “Women across the globe are less optimistic and less confident in their entrepreneurial skills and are more concerned about failure.”

To what extent could these differences be attributed to gender gaps in personal support networks or entrepreneurially-relevant skills and training? How does past employment experience pay a role? How do these gaps vary among low-, middle- and high- income countries? And could part of the gaps be explained by the “gender confidence reporting effect” – the fact that many men tend to show more bravado when answering survey questions of this type, whereas many women are more self-effacing in their answers? Surely, this new report offers much food for thought, and raises critical questions for the stewards of women’s entrepreneurship to ponder.

During the week of January 23, the U.S. Census Bureau is expected to release its report on the number and growth of women-owned enterprises from its 2002 Survey of Business Owners – the quinquennial census of enterprise activity, and the bible for all enterprise scholars. The national-level numbers were released back in July 2005 (read the news release here), but this report will provide state, local and industry-level detail. This is the report that supporters of women’s enterprise development in the U.S. wait anxiously for every five years, so our wait is almost over! Visit the Census’ SBO web page to obtain information on the report.

email: jweeks@womenable.com

web: http://www.womenable.com