Women entrepreneurs - Europe's untapped small business potential

If European governments really want to develop a thriving small business sector within the Union they must try to encourage more women to set up their own firms.

According to a recent conference in Paris, hosted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), women across the Union are positively brimming with business ideas but lack the support and encouragement to put them into practice.

A recent OECD survey found that in many countries, including Brazil, Ireland, Spain and the USA women are now starting up new companies at a faster rate than men.

But numerous participants at the Paris conference complained that women still face far more obstacles when it comes to taking the plunge and going into business than their male counterparts.

Most speakers agreed that a mixture of cultural and administrative factors lay at the heart of the female business community's problems.

On the cultural front, they argued that even in supposedly developed countries like the European Union's 15 member states, women are still not actively encouraged to go into business.

Women often have extremely sound business ideas and this is borne out by the fact that women-owned firms are statistically less likely to go bust than companies earned by men, explains Danièle Rousseau, head of French women's business lobby 'Dirigeantes'.

But they also tend to have far lower levels of self-confidence than their male counterparts and this is a problem that we need to tackle as early as possible, she adds.

Rousseau argues, for example, that the French government should do more to encourage girls to consider a career in business when they are still at school.

We need to introduce more of a notion of personal development into the education system, she says.

Raymond Bethoux, of Fiducial, a firm that specialises in providing business advice for companies with fewer than 20 employees, also believes that female entrepreneurs face more problems than their male counterparts.

Women face a double disadvantage, he explains.

In general they set up very small companies and these sorts of firms always find it hardest to get a sympathetic hearing from banks and the authorities. But on top of that they are also women and have deal with additional prejudices on that score, he adds.

The feeling that banks still tend to regard women with business projects as somehow less serious than men was expressed again and again at the conference.

Banking has a particular way of viewing SMEs and women in particular, said one Spanish delegate acidly.

Rousseau added that, ironically, women bankers seemed to be particularly tough when it came to dealing with requests for loans from other women.

Women bank managers are really the toughest of the lot! she complains.

Recently however, the banking community does seem to have recognised that it needs to change its attitude to women entrepreneurs.

Earlier this month four international banks - Bank of Ireland, FleetBoston Financial Corporation (USA), Royal Bank of Canada and Westpac Banking Corporation of Australia - announced the creation of a Global Alliance of Banks to study the needs of women in business.

The four banks have pledged to tailor their services more closely to the needs of female business customers and hope that other financial institutions will soon follow their example.

Many conference delegates also called on governments to provide more tailor-made business advice programmes for women.

Several pointed to the US Small Business Administration's (SBA) network of Women's Business Centres (WBC) as a possible model for other countries.

There are currently nearly 100 WBCs in the US that provide practical advice both to 'physical' customers and online via an extensive website.

Interestingly, very few of the women entrepreneurs at the Paris conference called for special funding programmes for female-run small businesses. Most simply wanted legislators to ensure that they compete on a level playing field with their male counterparts.

According to Henryka Bochniarz of the Polish Confederation of Private Employers what businesswomen need more than anything else is the freedom to put their ideas into practice.

We don't expect much form the government. What the government creates first and foremost is more bureaucracy and paperwork, she argued.

Bochniarz said that with the minimum of help, women entrepreneurs would have no problem finding their rightful place in the cut-throat world of small business.

To be successful as a woman, you have to be twice as good as a man. But we should try to that. It's not that hard after all, she insists.