Akosua Dardaine-Edwards Enabling the Enterprise Revolution: Engendering Women’s Enterprise Development in the Caribbean Presentation by Akosua Dardaine-Edwards .

The Background One of the key Development priorities of the Government Trinidad and Tobago is to Facilitate private sector led employment generation and entrepreneurship in non-oil sectors. The Government of Trinidad and Tobago is committed to elevate and promote the small business sector which is reflected in the programs initiated throughout the last decade, such as the Business Development Corporation, the Agricultural Development Bank, National Entrepreneurship Development Company Limited (NEDCO) and the other budgetary concessions such as the Fair Share Bill. Despite these efforts, the small business sector in Trinidad and Tobago faces major challenges throughout their life cycle, especially at their formation stage. Studies reveal that entrepreneurs still face numerous constraints, mostly in the areas of policy and regulations, co-ordination and support, finance, training and marketing, networking and infrastructure.

State of Female Entrepreneurship Trinidad and Tobago Women are less than half as likely to set up a business as men. In addition to facing the systemic barriers associated to setting up and running a successful enterprise, women are affected by a range of barriers arising from their double burden and conflicting role demands, socially and culturally imposed norms, limited educational and occupational opportunities, inherent lack of access to resources; Cross-country studies evaluating the state of female entrepreneurship indicates that women : Have a poor perception of their personal capacity to set up a business; Are likely to let fear of failure stop them from starting a business; Are less likely to know an entrepreneur; Less likely to think that they have the skills to start a business; Less likely to spot good business opportunities.

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Success factors associated with true Caribbean entrepreneurs Funding & Scaling - up Exporting Value chains Marketing Science & Technology Branding Value - add Cooperation Novel uses Sustainable

Female Entrepreneurship in Trinidad & Tobago Nearly 50% of the working age (15-64 years) population of Trinidad & Tobago are Female. The GEM (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor) – revealing whether women take an active part in economic & political life value for Trinidad and Tobago ranks 23rd. Women hold 25.4% of parliamentary seats, and make up 54% of professional and technical workers. 38% of administrators and managers are women. At least 35% of Trinidad and Tobago’s micro and small medium sized sectors are women owned. Presently, there are approximately 40,000 unemployed women in Trinidad, the majority of these women having families and responsibilities as primary care givers. Major proportion (65%) of these female owned enterprises were initiated due to necessity rather than due to choice.

Our Vision To create a healthy and vibrant Small and Medium enterprise sector in Trinidad & Tobago which encourages and facilitates female participation and ensures equality in access of services, availability of resources and utilisation of opportunities.

Dedicated Women’s Business Support Engendering Women’s Enterprise Development in the Caribbean Dedicated Women’s Business Support To initiate an institutional dialogue on female entrepreneurship in Trinidad & Tobago and evaluate ways to eliminate the existing barriers; To promote gender sensitive measures in supporting female entrepreneurship in Trinidad & Tobago To facilitate a discussion on enabling policy environment for female entrepreneurship; To provide a forum to successful female entrepreneurs to share and disseminate their experience To share and learn from international best practice.

Where does Enabling Enterprise fit? The Enabling Enterprise Project is a recent initiative that is being recommended to assist in promoting entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship support for women in Trinidad and Tobago The Project will focus on the following areas Support for start ups Funding Training Mentoring Information Advice and Consultancy Networking Research and Advocacy

Conclusions The lack of specialised enterprise women support is a major barrier to women starting, growing and developing businesses therefore a possible solution is an agency providing dedicated support to empower and assist women to start and grow businesses through proper training, enterprise support, research and assistance. The recommendation is to develop gender based programs to support women business owners in Trinidad and Tobago as detailed above this should also include allocating resources to micro credit and other alternative forms of financing. It is hoped that Enabling Enterprise will be one of the pioneers in women business support in the Caribbean.

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