ASEAN promotes businesswomen’s rights

Sunday, November 09, 2014 16:32

Disparities accessing to economic opportunities which have persistedacross ASEAN and elsewhere in the world have created formidablechallenges to the start-up, development and internationalisation ofwomen-owned business, heard a Bangkok dialogue between the ASEAN SMEWorking Group (SMEWG) and the US-ASEAN Business Alliance for CompetitiveSMEs plus other stakeholders.

Thus women owndisproportionately fewer firms and their firms are often smaller interms of scale and are in the informal sector at the bottom of theenterprise pyramid.

Furthermore, businesswomen often face morelimited access to finance than men, which results in untapped economicpotential and missed development opportunities.

Themed RegionalPolicy Dialogue on Empowering Women Entrepreneurs to Advance ASEANEconomic Community (AEC) Development, the dialogue brought together theASEAN SMEWG, ASEAN Women Entrepreneurs Network (AWEN) members, socialenterprises and private-sector stakeholders at the national and regionallevels, and representatives from several international organisations.

The attendees shared good practices, success stories andlessons learned in fostering women entrepreneurship and enterprises.

They also provided recommendations on how to incorporate gendermainstreaming to enhance women's entrepreneurship and enterprise forSMEWG's consideration in framing the ASEAN SME Strategic Vision andAction Plan (2016-2025) and its Implementation Roadmap for 2016-2020.-VNA

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