WEDGE Regional Asia

Project Summary Women’s Entrepreneurship Development and Gender Equality - WEDGE follows a development and rights-based approach which aims to satisfy the practical needs of women entrepreneurs, to remove the socio-cultural, legal and political barriers for women entrepreneurship and to advocate for an enabling environment for business development and gender equality. The justification for promoting women’s entrepreneurship development and gender equality is threefold. Firstly, gender equality is a key goal in itself as stated in international agreements such as the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination of Women. Secondly, gender equality of opportunity and women’s empowerment are essential for economic growth. Thirdly, women’s entrepreneurship development and gender equality can make a particularly strong contribution to the well-being of the family and communities. Where women have more control over the resources of the household, the pattern of consumption tends to be more child-focussed and oriented to meeting basic needs. Women entrepreneurs operating micro and small businesses in the informal economy make a strong contribution to the economic well-being of the family and communities. However, as they remain outside the scope of SME development policies and programmes, their changes of developing lucrative businesses remain slim. For example, many women face barriers accessing: - commercial credit from formal financial service providers; - more lucrative markets, rather than the traditional local markets; - technology and information to establish and grow their businesses; - national incentives in small enterprise development through gender blind private sector development and fiscal policies and legislation; - training and education for small enterprise development. Phase III of WEDGE will be decentralised and will continue to promote women’s entrepreneurship and support women entrepreneurs to create decent employment, achieve women’s empowerment and gender equality, and work toward poverty reduction. The overriding aim of Phase III will be to build the capacity of local partners in such a way that the ILO’s approaches and tools in women’s entrepreneurship will be embedded and ongoing. WEDGE works in three countries in Asia (Cambodia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Viet Nam) and in five countries in Africa (Ethiopia, Zambia, Uganda, Kenya and the United Republic of Tanzania). Building on the tools and methodologies developed over the previous six years, the project will work with national governments, constituents and partner agencies to remove the obstacles that women face in starting and growing their businesses. There will be an emphasis on building the capacity of constituents and partners to carry out research, deliver training, and to lobby government on behalf of the interests of women entrepreneurs. The WEDGE team will continue to work closely with ILO’s Skills and Employability Department (SKILLS) to mainstream disability throughout its interventions. The project will also liaise with ILO/AIDS to mainstream HIV/AIDS throughout its activities, with the Social Finance programme in its work on microfinance and with the ILO International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (ILO IPEC).

Project symbol

RAS/08/50/IRL

Admin unit

DWT-Bangkok

Start date

01/08/2008

End date

30/09/2011

Total allocation

1745031

Total expenditure

Status

Closed

1745031

Development Partners

Ireland, Irish Aid

Country/Countries

Asia and the Pacific - regional

Outcomes

Mainstreaming Decent Work