The Challenges of Growing Small Businesses - International Labour ...

2.5 The enabling environment for women’s
enterprise
Figure 5:
The enabling environment for women’s
entrepreneurship
Enterprise Support Sector
(Government, NGO, Private Sector, Membership
Organisations, donors etc
Motivation &
Determination
Idea with a
Market
S
P
Plan
H
Women
F
N
Manage
Abilities,
skills and
experience
Resources
The Economic / Market Environment
(Opportunities and threats)
‘Enabling Environment’ for enterprise
(Regulations, policies, institutions and processes)
All businesses –
including micro, small,
medium and large – require a
conducive and enabling
environment comprised of
supportive policies, laws and
regulations. Similarly,
enterprise support projects
and programmes require
consistent support from the
enabling environment if they
are to be effective. The
recent paper prepared for the
OECD on “Entrepreneurship
in a Global Economy” (Hall,
2003) has outlined the key
components of an enabling
business and entrepreneurial
environment, and the
importance that they can have for business creation and growth. “Creating a policy
environment which is conducive to entrepreneurship for all is now a priority for all
governments. Entrepreneurship is a means to an end, for both the individual entrepreneur,
and for governments. Policies which encourage entrepreneurship have the potential to help
governments address some of the key policy issues of the day, such as: job creation;
regional development; self-assistance and gender mainstreaming (…) (Hall, 2003). The
enhanced MAIR-SL framework used throughout this report also pinpoints the impact of
the enabling environment on various factors that are critical for women in starting and
growing their enterprises.
Entrepreneurship and widespread ownership of business across the population is quite
a new phenomenon in the three study countries, with significant expansion and growth
only really occurring in the early 1990s, largely as a result of political and structural
economic adjustment and changes, and the shrinking of public and parastatal sectors (see
UDEC, 2002; Zewde & Associates, 2002). Likewise, many of the policies, laws and
institutions guiding and controlling enterprise development are also relatively recent and
still evolving (see GRZ, 1996; URT, 1995 & 2002, and FDRE, 1997). The ILO Study’s
secondary research presents mixed messages about the extent to which the legislative,
regulatory, institutional and policy environment of the three study countries really does
“enable” or “disable” the development of women entrepreneurs. While structures of the
enabling environment are apparently equitable to women and men in business in many
respects, in reality their practice often disables MSEs in general and women in particular.
Figure 5 shows how the enabling environment impacts of the key components of the
MAIR framework, as well as on women entrepreneurs’ access to the five categories of
capital.
2.5.1 Equality legislation
In each of the three countries covered by the WED study, there is a national policy on
women or gender. In Zambia, the new National Gender Policy was adopted in 2000; in
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