Virtual Regional Roundtable “Building a sustainable Western Balkan women entrepreneurs hub”

December 14, 2021

Daniela Gašparíková, UNDP Resident Representative to Montenegro

Distinguished guests, dear friends,

let me start by wishing you and your loved ones good health.

I am very pleased that we are welcoming you to this virtual roundtable on women’s entrepreneurship.  It is a great pleasure to be here today as this topic is very close to my heart. The virtual Roundtable we are holding today on the issue of women’s entrepreneurship - presents one of the key pillars of comprehensive framework that outlines high-impact interventions to improve the status of women and advance gender equality in the Western Balkan region. Regional UNDP and RCC Joint Action for Women’s Economic Empowerment presents a strategic vision for long-term change, delineating actions to strengthen the human capital of women, whose participation and leadership in politics and the economy are crucial to inclusive socio-economic development. The key objective of the framework is to strengthen women’s capacity to participate in, contribute to and benefit from growth processes in ways, which recognizes the value of their economic contributions and enable fairer distribution of the benefits of growth.

With multilateral cooperation and coordination as its key principles to advance gender equality, the UNDP and RCC initiative sets forth priority actions to promote policies that will turn the COVID-19 crisis into an opportunity that improves the well-being of all.

The framework encompasses key thematic areas - “drivers of change” which reflect the needs of the region in the area of gender equality and women economic empowerment. Our joint efforts are directed towards regional networking that mobilizes policy makers and stakeholders, enhances regional dialogue, raises awareness of existing biases, and promotes cooperation and good practices in the broader women's economic empowerment sector.

As the pandemic continues, the fragile economic and political environment in the Western Balkans renders it one of the most vulnerable regions to the political and economic impacts of the Covid-19.  The social impact has been still unfolding, but all current estimates make us assume that the biggest shock will come from a massive unemployment wave, which is expected to be unprecedented and broad-based in the Western Balkans.

Western Balkans requires our collective attention with focus on Women’s labour participation in the region, which is often informal or part-time. 40% of the total employed in the Western Balkan are women and more than 23% of them hold insecure jobs. Many women risk losing their jobs or seeing their wages decrease as a consequence of the increasing of their domestic burden.  They are far more likely to shoulder the burden of unpaid work. And they are less likely to have access to assets, property and financial services. Western Balkan women perform on average 3 times more unpaid work than men and spend about half as much time in paid work where they account for almost 80% of workers in low-paid care sectors.

For too long, discriminatory stereotypes have prevented women and girls from having equal access to assets and land or equal access to education in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

UNDP is therefore working with national governments, but also CSOs and private sector to develop gender-responsive economic plans, strategies, policies and social protection programmes to adequately addresses women’s entrepreneurial opportunities, gender gap in digitalization and STEM where jobs of future are based.  For example, the share o of women in STEM occupations is only 14%.

We cannot afford NOT TO invest in women and girls. We must work together to support and remove barriers to women’s economic recovery and empowerment, and entrepreneurship in its various forms is a powerful catalyst to make this a reality. Entrepreneurship can generate jobs for women and their peers and help them tackle the challenges faced by their communities. And as much as the COVID-19 crisis is a threat for women entrepreneurs, it has also provided an opportunity to do things differently, including creating a greater acceptance of remote working models, accelerating digitalization, and increasing the visibility of alternative forms of leadership. Women are important agents of change, and harnessing the potential of women entrepreneurs will be crucial for the sustainable and inclusive recovery of economies and societies from the crisis. As a co-leader of the UN system’s socio-economic response, UNDP has prioritized gender-responsive social protection and women’s economic recovery in 46 countries, including through supporting women-led micro, small, and medium enterprises, digital solutions, and cooperative development. For instance, in Nepal, UNDP, together with ILO, IOM, and UNESCO, is working with women informal workers, migrants, and women’s cooperatives and assisting through cash transfers, livelihoods support, and reskilling. UNDP is also mobilizing governments to enact gender-responsive policies, including those that support women entrepreneurs. Our new COVID-19 Global Gender Tracker shows that 130 countries and territories have adopted 503 fiscal and economic measures to help businesses weather the crisis. Still, only 10 percent of these measures aim to strengthen women’s economic security by channeling resources to female-dominated sectors.

We have to tap fully into existing human capital of half of countries’ populations and inequality faced by women through continues – gender pay gap and accordingly pension gaps; feminized poverty; low representation in leadership positions; gender-based violence and violence against women; persistent gender stereotypes or hate speech.

Women’s skills, talents, innovation, perspectives and leadership are needed to solve the current region’s biggest challenges including rebuilding economies.  Women who own businesses are women who originate, who lead, who adapt, who create. They bring this spirit to their families and communities, often going well beyond societal expectations of the roles women should play.

We are today with women who are in their own ways championing addressing of disproportionate economic and social consequences on women and girls because of financial exclusion, the gender digital divide, a greater burden of unpaid care work, issue with participation in policy design and other gender-based inequalities - bringing us rich pool of experiences at this Virtual Roundtable different perspectives of women entrepreneurs.

Already before the COVID crisis, the progress has slowed to a standstill – and in some cases, been reversed. Recently, increasingly, there is a strong and relentless pushback against women’s rights.

Our joint task is to contribute to unlock women power in the region and assure economic empowerment and unleash women’s entrepreneurial potential. Thank you all for being with us today and helping us to find best ways to do it!