This issue of the Womenable E³ News is all about assessments. What's the current state of the women's enterprise development movement? What's the state of women-owned firms in the US and elsewhere? And what is BEE and why should we care? Read on ...

There's been a lot of buzzing in recent years about BEE: business enabling environments. Fueled in part by the visibility of the World Bank's Doing Business indicators, and by an increasing desire among donor agencies to ensure a greater return on their development assistance investments, there's more focus now on assessing and improving the laws and policies that support enterprise development.

Unfortunately, these assessments have largely been "gender blind," which - according to a recent white paper published by Womenable - has meant that many of the social and cultural barriers to women's entry into business ownership and the growth of their enterprises have remained unaddressed. There are some efforts to assess BEE with a gender lens, however. These efforts, and their common conclusions, are described in the paper.

An early version of the aforementioned white paper was presented at last year's Diana conference. An updated version was recently presented at the 56th annual International Council for Small Business world conference in Stockholm, and was also presented by Womenable President and CEO Julie Weeks at the annual meeting of The Donor Committee for Enterprise Development in Ottawa, Canada.

It's available for your reading pleasure at THIS LINK.

And for more about the gender-aware assessments highlighted in the paper, visit these links:

• International Finance Corporation's Women in Business Program  
• International Labour Organization's Women's Entrepreneurship Development Program  
• USAID: GenderCLIR  

If you're a social media follower of Womenable, you've already seen our tweets, Facebook posts, and web site coverage of our most recent research effort: an extensive report on the state of women-owned firms in the US based upon data published by the Census Bureau late last year.

The report, The American Express OPEN State of Women-Owned Businesses Report, was underwritten by - guess who - American Express OPEN, published by them in late March, and has received extensive media coverage since then. Here are a few of the articles of note:

• "Women Owners Hit $1 Million Glass Ceiling" ~ Wall St. Journal
• "Women-Owned Businesses Have Risen 50%" ~ Reuters  
• "The next frontier" ~ Cindy Goodman, Miami Herald & syndicated to more than a dozen other papers  
• "The Glass Ceiling of Entrepreneurship" ~ Pretty Young Professional 
• "Georgia women-owned businesses growing fast, but revenue, jobs lag" ~ Atlanta Journal-Constitution 
• "Women business owners a growing force" ~ Business Review West Michigan 

And, of course, you'll be wanting the report for your womenabling reference library. You can find it HERE. You may also wish to read the American Express OPEN news release , as well as Womenable's  e-release and blogpost commentary on the findings. 

In addition to the blockbuster report on the state of women-owned businesses highlighted above, which is based on data from the US Census Bureau, there have been two similar surveys conducted among women business owners in the US recently, which focus on their issue concerns, views on the economy, and plans for growth. And, the newly-launched UN Women has issued its first report. Here's a recap and links to more information: