3 minute read
Enabling women to achieve greater heights in the SME sector is essential to national development
by Media Xpose
Enabling women to achieve greater heights
in the SME sector is essential to national development
Businesswomen in South Africa are familiar with the saying that they have achieved success on their own merits by "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps". Often, this truth is linked to the fact that local women entrepreneurs face many challenges on their chosen, sometimes lonely paths to building enterprises.
Alack of opportunity to reach their potential means that women are not given the choices they deserve to help grow the economies in which they operate, while inspiring others around them. It is a national loss as well. When about 51% of the population is female, it is safe to assume a wealth of untapped talent is lying waiting and ready to be used in a society beset with economic and unemployment issues that desperately need people to create growth.
However, in South Africa, although many women are entering business, they seem to lag behind their male counterparts if success is measured in terms of work received and the acquisition of funding to meet orders is considered. It is a gap that needs to be closed if women are to become full participants in our economy.
The People's Fund's experience of helping to fund SME's short of cash to meet their order delivery goals, shows that presently only 27% of its annual funding assistance is accounted for by women-owned businesses.
In turn, 27% of the women applying for assistance are young, ambitious women under 35. They significantly outpace the financial helping hand needed by women over 50, who account for only 10% of the People's Fund activity.
As the statistics seem to point out, it is young female entrepreneurs who most need assistance to ensure that their businesses survive the cash flow crunches that often cause the demise of small businesses. The question is what has to be done to empower this group and other economically active women to participate in and even lead enterprise development?
The answer is complex and involves removing or resolving the socio-economic factors that disadvantage women in the business space. They include: • Realising at a macro-economic level that restricting women's ability to access resources, funding and production facilities so they participate economically diminishes the South African economy's ability to grow. • Developing 'gender mainstreaming' programmes to achieve gender equality by addressing gender inequalities at a policy and implementation level. • Changing the focus on development projects which concentrate on addressing women's practical needs.
These projects tend to focus on traditional employment opportunities or maternal services (creation of vegetable gardens, knitting and social services such as crèches).
These approaches tend to reinforce existing gender roles. • Moving away from community-based projects to widening boundaries by actively assisting women with developing financial literacy skills and business disciplines. • Encouraging formal business associations, like Chambers of Commerce, to highlight issues surrounding women in business.
As far back as 2012, the World Economic Forum identified women as the 'way forward' and stated that women entrepreneurs were essential for growth and development. Despite this, there is a tendency for many women to be 'necessity' entrepreneurs – people who are forced into SME activities because they have no other choice.
Although much has been achieved in South Africa to encourage women to start and build businesses, it is still a challenging arena that requires strength and persistence. South African women have both these characteristics in abundance and need only to be encouraged further to play a leading part in national development. ■
The People's Fund is helping to close traditional barriers facing SMEs by concentrating on a purchase order (PO) approach to SMEs. It is a crowdfunding platform that aims to help SMEs with capital so they can deliver on orders received primarily from the government sector, which earmarks about R200 million to the SME sector annually.
Instead of representing financial institutions and formal lenders, the People's Fund platform encourages people from all walks of life to help grow talented entrepreneurs by contributing funding to their enterprises and benefitting from the proceeds.
Precious Mvulane: Independent Non-Executive Director, The People's Fund
