WES The European Network to Promote Womens

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WESThe European Network toPromote
WomenssEntrepreneurship

• September 2006
• Marianne Karlberg

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Aim of the W E S

• Raising visibility of existing women
  entrepreneurs
• Create a climate that is favourable to women
  entrepreneurs
• Increase the number of new women entrepreneurs

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The means to reach this

• To be a discussion partner towards the European
  Union (Commission and Parliament)
• To co-operate with already existing networks and
  organisations
• Benchmarking exchange information, knowledge
  and good practise

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Members

• All the member countries in the European Union
  including the accessing countries and
• Norway and Iceland
• The members represent national governments and
  central institutions with
• responsibility to promote women entrepreneurship
  within their country.

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Working methods and strategies

• Areas of action should be determined according to
  the political and cultural circumstances in each
  country
• Within W E S there are possibilities to
  co-operate
• in smaller groups on international projects
• Non-European Union countries can be involved in
  these projects

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For example A catalogue for good practise Other
strategies are e g to discuss the definition of
good practises for mainstreaming strategies

• National report from WES- members
• 2004 and 2005
• 2006 including statistics on women
  entrepreneurship

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Networking and changing traditionsTo strengthen
womens possibilities to choose entrepreneurship
as one way of living, is a part of strengthening
the democracy in the society.
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Prioritised areasEconomic support/financing,incl
uding access to credit and utilisation of public
grantsEducation and business development
trainingCounselling NetworkingMentoringGender
based statistics
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Today only about 25-30 of the entrepreneurs are
women (European countries)Men and women should
have equal opportunities to the same support,
finance and education
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Networking is essential when you want to change
the existing tradition in order to strengthen
good initiatives - because networking is also
used to make the tradition go on unchanged.
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Networking is also a way of exchanging
knowledgesupporting development for women
entrepreneurs, building longlasting, effective
business-partnerships amongst women
entrepreneurs
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The WES network is now preparing the report for
2005 where we will include some main statistics
on womens entrepreneurship in every country.The
2005 report will be released in June 2006
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For moore information on the WES report
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Marianne KarlbergWES co-ordinatorCounty
Administrative Board of SödermanlandS 611 86
NyköpingSwedenmarianne.karlberg_at_d.lst.se