From 17 to 19 November 2020, empirica co-organised a workshop on women’s entrepreneurship. The event took place fully online and was moderated from Prague. It was the second of three workshops on this subject in the project “peer-learning in entrepreneurship education and in women’s entrepreneurship”, coordinated by empirica on behalf of EASME. 37 participants convened to share knowledge, experience and ideas to support female entrepreneurs. The interactive workshop brought together stakeholders from ministries and other governmental bodies, from non-profit organisations and from the European Commission as well as entrepreneurs. The participants came from 22 European countries. They developed eight concrete actions in four themes:

Entrepreneurial education:

(1) Promote entrepreneurship as a career path for women and

(2) Ensure entrepreneurial experience early at school, adopting a gender-sensitive approach.

Finance:

(3) Create a European fund or programme focused on female entrepreneurs and

(4) Implement educational programmes on financial management.

Role models and awareness:

(5) Run an EU-driven media campaign and

(6) Establish regulations for inclusiveness and gender equality.

Umbrella organisation and networks:

(7) Enhance the role of WEgate (https://wegate.eu), the European platform for women’s entrepreneurship, and

(8) Advance the dialogue between all stakeholders towards creating common goals.

“It became clear that many activities in the four targeted themes are interlinked. For example, promoting entrepreneurship as a career path requires role models, sufficient funding and networks”, says Stefan Lilischkis, the project’s co-ordinator from empirica. “Moreover, a strong need to collect more data about women’s entrepreneurship became apparent. The third and last workshop will go deeper into this issue.”

See also a Newsletter related to the workshop: Newsletter