The number of women who are self-employed across the European Union is much lower than men and the number of women entrepreneurs with employees is even lower.

When starting a business, women often face different barriers and circumstances than men. They may have to struggle with specific problems and do not participate in support programmes to the same extent as men do.

Many European regions have developed support facilities and mechanisms which specifically benefit women entrepreneurs, and have implemented these support mechanisms in a number of different ways.

The aim to find out about these mechanisms, exchange experience and discover what examples of Good Practice for women entrepreneurship exist constituted the framework for the activities of the Thematic Network ProWomEn – Promotion of Women Entrepreneurship, whose expert members – both male and female – represent 16 European regions.

The starting point of the project was a detailed survey on women entrepreneurship in the member regions. Women specific activities as well as general support programmes with focus on gender aspects were gathered in an extensive data collection.

Critical success factors were then identified for the following key issues:

Then to identify good practice the data collection was screened according to the critical success factors determined.

In a voting process the ProWomEn members decided on 13 good practice methods which were to become the basis for case studies. The ProWomEn co-ordinators have visited all selected examples and conducted interviews with the responsible organisers of each case. Based on the information collected in these study visits, case studies on the good practice examples were written.

Yorkshire Futures
info@yorkshirefutures.com

//2003

case

Urban Policy

Economy knowledge & employment, Social inclusion & integration