Group calls for plan to close gender gap
REGINA When it comes to owning a business, Three Farmers CEO Natasha Vandenhurk can’t say enough good things about her mentors.
“Networks and mentors are extremely important, especially for young entrepreneurs as they start planning forward, to just help guide them,” Vandenhurk said Monday in Regina at a Women Entrepreneurs of Saskatchewan (WESK) news conference.
One of the key findings of a new Wesk-commissioned report, Women Entrepreneurship in Canada, is that government consider policy to fund the creation of women’s networks to support female entrepreneurs.
WESK is calling on the provincial government to create an action plan for female entrepreneurs, which could help close the gender gap when it comes to entrepreneurship. “Investing in women is not simply the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do,” said WESK CEO Prabha Mitchell.
Female-owned businesses contribute $148 billion to the Canadian economy, according to a 2011 study. Growing female entrepreneurship could add $150 billion to $420 billion to the Canadian economy by 2026, according to Pricewaterhousecoopers (PWC) Canada, which authored the WESK report.
Tina Beaudry-mellor, the provincial Minister of Advanced Education, and responsible for the Status of Women Office, said Saskatchewan’s female entrepreneur population has grown 16.5 per cent in the past decade.
However, there are issues in growing this area, according to the report and Beaudry-mellor.
“There is still the perception of gender-based lending risk in the financial industry, and there is also the gendered resistance of women themselves to pursue aggressive business growth strategies,” said Beaudry-mellor.
“It’s a complex phenomenon that we’re talking about,” Mitchell agreed. “So it’s not just one piece, which is, yes, women report lower levels of confidence than men when it comes to starting a business and growing a business.”
Other issues include the external barriers that female entrepreneurs encounter. Vandenhurk spoke about such a barrier.
“As a company, we’re seeing aggressive growth, essentially doubling sales year over year. Access to capital is crucial for us at this time. We’ve had many discussions with venture capital and funds within the Prairie provinces,” she said.
“Recently, I was meeting with the newly formed advisory board and it was suggested to me that we should speak to a specific femalerun venture fund, as she had special interest in females and femalerun companies.
“My question to this is, would other funds not be interested in a high-growth company that has a clear path to success and a proven track record? Apparently, femalerun funds are indeed needed if this is the mindset that we’re experiencing from business owners out in the field.”
Mitchell is optimistic that change is coming, pointing to the federal government’s female entrepreneurship strategy and the provincial technology startup incentive. Some highlights of the report: In Saskatchewan, 13.7 per cent of small and medium enterprises (SMES) are majority femaleowned, compared to 15.7 per cent nationally and 17 per cent in Ontario.
Financing is the No. 1 barrier to women starting businesses for reasons such as lending discrimination, barriers to venture capital, and having less income to invest.
The rejection rate for financing, according to Industry Canada data from 2015, is skewed to favour men: 65.7 per cent of women’s applications were rejected, compared with 24.8 per cent of men’s.
Women are lagging in STEM education. The report calls on more training and education opportunities for women sectors that are traditionally male-dominated.