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Finance for Women

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Marlene Shalton explains the help now available to women wanting to start their own businesses.

I was honoured recently, to be one of the judges of the mother@work awards. The judging becomes harder each year, since each finalist could easily be a winner. The Mumpreneur is a particularly difficult award to judge: some of the women are awe inspiring and not least was the winner this year, Tanya Rostron.

Many women may have dreamed about leaving the boss behind and starting their own business, as I once did and successfully too, but only a few women make it a reality. Yet according to the Chief Executive of the Small Business Service, Martin Wyn Griffith, a pound invested in developing women’s enterprise provides a greater return on investment than a pound invested in developing male owned enterprise.

The top reasons for women wanting to start a business include having more flexibility to take care of family responsibilities and wanting a change of career. However the risk of having unstable income, a fear of failure and the difficulties of raising start-up cash prevent many from taking the plunge.

That’s why the government’s new business support facility – the Women’s Enterprise Taskforce – has been set up to offer support to women who want to start a business. There is now more help for women in business than ever before, and fewer reasons to prevent their entrepreneurial dreams becoming a reality.

The Women’s Enterprise Taskforce

Announced in February 2008 by Margaret Hodge, the minister of state for industry and the regions, the Women's Enterprise Task Force was created with the aim of channelling the entrepreneurial skills of women considering pursuing their own entrepreneurial activities.

According to co-Chair, Pam Alexander, "our aim is to inspire and harness the talents and skills of potential women entrepreneurs and to do all we can to encourage them to prosper.

"The benefits will be many and broad; firstly, realising the untapped potential of women's enterprise will make a dramatic and positive economic contribution to the UK's GVA."

How can the taskforce help female entrepreneurs? According to the website, the taskforce will concentrate on these areas:

• Work with Regional Development Agencies to ensure women have access to high-quality, women-friendly support
• Lead joint action with banks to improve awareness of financing options for women entrepreneurs
• Improve the transition of women from benefit receipt to self-employment
• Embed gender-disaggregated data-collection as a principle across Government and the regions
• Raise and maintain the public profile of Women’s Enterprise in the media and with the public.

Prowess

Supporting the activities of 100,000 women every year, Prowess provides the tools necessary to access business support advice in their own area and also offer advice in a number of different areas, ranging from techniques for generating sufficient levels of capital, to providing advice on taking on the first employee.

More on page 2.