I WAS thrilled recently to have been asked to join the Women’s Enterprise Policy Group (WEPG) as its Northern Ireland practitioner representative.
The WEPG is a UK-wide partnership of researchers and women’s business support practitioners that commits to share research and practice evidence about responsible enterprise policy that enables women and others to campaign for this to shape UK and devolved government and regional policy.
The purpose is to bring together research and practice evidence to establish what works for women entrepreneurs and what supports they need, to then lobby for UK and devolved governments to act on the evidence base to support enterprising women.
Given the huge challenge to women’s enterprise posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, a focus for WEPG in 2020-21 will be on issuing joint comment on Covid enterprise policies as they emerge and making policy proposals.
The group is now urging Rishi Sunak to give women’s enterprise a voice and a seat at the policy table.
The chancellor has laid out a suite of policies to support small businesses which have so far fallen through the cracks in coronavirus support schemes, promising they “have not been forgotten”.
But there are still a host of female entrepreneurs and women-led businesses which actually have been overlooked and forgotten in these schemes and that there is an urgent need to put gender-aware policies in place.
The group's co-chair is Julia Rouse, Professor of Entrepreneurship at Manchester Metropolitan University and head of the Sylvia Pankhurst Gender Research Centre.
Directly addressing Rishi Sunak recently, she said: “There is an urgent need for women’s enterprise to be at the policy table.
“Developing gender responsive policy for women requires our expertise: we can help analyse how Covid-19 is impacting women-led businesses, monitor policy impact and help shape and implement policies that work for women.
“The peak of the crisis for women-led businesses may come just before Christmas as the self-employment Income Support Scheme and the Job Retention Scheme close.
“We are haunted by an image of a devastating pre-Christmas period for households and families across the UK. An economic disaster could ravage local communities and could be offset if women are given more of a voice.
“So we urge the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to bring the Women’s Enterprise Policy Group to the policy-making table.”
“Now is the time to put gender-aware policies in place. Now is the time to develop gender responsive policies to avoid the serious risk of economic devastation in communities across the UK for generations to come. And now is the time to make sure women-led business are not forgotten and we are, indeed, 'in this together'.”
Roseann Kelly is chief executive of Women in Business (www.womeninbusinessni.com)
