ISLAMABAD: Entrepreneurs and public office holders came together to discuss the impediments to women entrepreneurship and how to resolve them.
During the panel discussion titled ‘Women in trade – a South Asian Perspective’, organised by the SDPI for Sustainable Development Conference, experts highlighted multiple challenges and areas of improvement to increase women entrepreneurship.
Birgit Lamm from the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FNF) opened the discussion and shared how her foundation was helping formulate the framework needed for any business to grow, especially women led businesses.
“Where ever in the world a new business is established, it comes with its unique challenges, starting with raising capital. So, our goal is to provide a fair playing field for all men, women and even younger entrepreneurs,” Ms Lamm said, adding that "women in trade is not a female issue, it's a societal issue".
Mahnoor Arshad, Research Associate from SDPI, presented a study conducted by SDPI on Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh on women empowerment.
The study revealed that even though South Asia had seen rise in women holding public offices, investment in education and health of women remained stagnant.
Both of these metrics can directly impact women empowerment and gender equality, which in turn leads to higher women entrepreneurship, the study showed.
Ms Arshad said the study also proved that failure to remove the barriers to women entrepreneurship was causing economic losses for Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
She raised an alarming statistic that showed that 76 per cent of Pakistani women in the survey said that they did not know what internet was, compared to 39 per cent in Sri Lanka and 69 per cent in Bangladesh.
CEO of Asqurr and co-convener of FPCCI’s committee on entrepreneurship Nausheen Barkat shed light on the ways in which women entrepreneurs could benefit from associations like FPCCI.
She said there were mechanisms in place with such federations, such as subsidised registration rates, as well as platforms to engage with other businesswomen, that could aide in improving access and market reach.
She also said microfinance banking systems played an important role in providing finance at subsidised rates, but if this facility was to be made accessible to the rural women, extra effort was needed to engage and educate them on these opportunities.
CEO of Pakistan Single Window (PSW) Aftab Haider said the problems were well documented.
Several of the challenges of doing business are untraditional, such as cross border trade. Women who are new to business face problems but many women who have been in business for a long time also face the same problems, he added.
“Even if we have access to internet, do we know how to use it for entrepreneurship. While most of us use it for entertainment, not many people know how to leverage it for business,” he added.
Former chairperson of National Technology Council (NTC) Anjum Assad Amin turned the conversation towards the discrepancy between mainstream statistics and the realities at hand, especially the divide between the urban and rural women.
“How many of these public facilitation centres are in rural areas and how many of the rural girls are allowed to visit the urban areas to avail these facilities,” she asked.
Najma Afzal, former member of the provincial assembly, said if the sectors where women were already predominant were focused on, it could largely help women-led businesses.
Chairperson of National Vocational and Technical Training Commission (NAVTTC) Gulmina Bilal Ahmad concluded the session by saying that the public, private and development sectors should not be saying that they were “supporting” women. “The public sector should be making sure that they have the same facilities and a level playing field,” she added.
