Tag Archives: Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network

New York City Tops New Womenabling Cities Index

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A new accounting of the most supportive cities for growth-oriented women entrepreneurs was recently released at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, just ahead of the Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network conference in Johannesburg, South Africa. The WE Cities Index lists the 25 cities globally that provide the most supportive capital, technology, talent, culture and markets for growth-oriented women, a population they refer to as “high potential women entrepreneurs.” Those cities are:DellWECitieschart

  1. New York City
  2. the San Francisco Bay Area
  3. London
  4. Stockholm
  5. Singapore
  6. Toronto
  7. Washington, DC
  8. Sydney
  9. Paris
  10. Seattle
  11. Munich
  12. Austin
  13. Beijing
  14. Hong Kong
  15. Taipei
  16. Shanghai
  17. Tokyo
  18. Mexico City
  19. São Paulo
  20. Seoul
  21. Milan
  22. Delhi
  23. Johannesburg
  24. Jakarta
  25. Istanbul

For an interactive look at how each of these cities ranks in the five major index areas, visit this web page.

The WE Cities Index follows on the heels of the Global Women Entrepreneurs Scorecard, which was released the prior year. That effort analyzed 21 variables in a five-element framework, and ranked 31 countries around the globe for their supportive policies and programs to help women scale their enterprises. The findings of the country-focused effort (which was supported in part from Womenable) were highlighted in this Womenable blogpost from 2015.

Tops on that list were the United States, Canada, Australia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom — home to nine of the 25 top-ranked global cities for women entrepreneurs who are shooting for the stars. Godspeed on your journey, ladies!

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2nd Annual Gender-GEDI Report Reveals Most Womenabling Economies

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Yesterday, Dell hosted the fifth gathering of the Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network (#DWEN) in its hometown, Austin Texas. In addition to sharing their own stories of struggle and success, these women of accomplishment also saw Dell release their second annual Gender Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index report (also known by the moniker #Gender-GEDI). The Index analyzes the conditions favorable for high-growth potential women entrepreneurs – including laws, programs, and individual characteristics. This year saw the analysis expand from 17 to 30 countries, which collectively account for 66% of the world’s female population and 75% of global GDP. The analysis finds that:Woman hiking to Everest basecamp

  • The most womenabling economies in the world are the United States, Australia and Sweden, with scores of 83, 80 and 73, respectively. They are followed by France and Germany (tied at 67), Chile (55), the United Kingdom (54) and Poland (51);
  • With the top tier economies receiving scores of 51 to 83 on a 0-100 scale, there is room for improvement. Indeed, the other 22 countries received scores under 50, including four countries (Uganda, Egypt, Bangladesh and Pakistan) receiving Gender-GEDI scores under 20;
  • Among the 17 countries included in both the 2013 and 2014 Gender GEDI Index reports, four increased their ranking and four declined. Japan improved the most, up three places from 12th to 9th. Brazil jumped two places, from 14th to 12th. The biggest decline was seen in Malaysia, which dropped four spots, from 9th to 13th; and
  • When comparing the rankings of countries included in the Gender-GEDI analysis with those also included in the non-gendered GEDI rankings, ten countries rank better for high-potential women’s entrepreneurship than for general entrepreneurial conditions. In alphabetical order, they are: Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Germany, Ghana, Mexico, Panama, Russia, South Africa, and Thailand.

Read more about the report’s highlights in the study news release, and click HERE to learn more about the Gender-GEDI and how it is constructed. And for you fellow statistical mavens, click HERE to download and read the 46-page executive report. A more complete report, including background tables and more country-level detail, will be available soon – and when it is, you’ll be able to find it on Womenable’s Reference Library web page.

A New Measurement of Support for Women’s Entrepreneurship

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The Womenabler has long lamented the lack of a business-enabling environment (BEE) assessment that takes the special challenges facing would-be and established women business owners into account. Traditional BEE assessments (such as The World Bank’s Doing Business indicators or the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom) are “gender-blind,” thus ignoring both the legal and cultural impediments that exist for women in many countries when they attempt to start or grow businesses. And, at the same time, gender equality indices (such as the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap reports, the Economist Intelligence female figure on map of EuropeUnit’s Women’s Economic Opportunity Index, or the UN’s Gender Empowerment Measure) do not include entrepreneurial measures as among the factors assessed. And, interestingly, the top-ranked countries in each of these two distinct types of environmental assessments share exactly 0 countries in common. (See the paper, “Assessing Business-Enabling Environments: How Gender Changes the Equation,” presented by Womenable CEO Julie Weeks in 2011 at both an academic conference and a meeting of national policy institutions.)

Now, into the breach, comes an exciting new project: Gender-GEDI. Spearheaded by a team at George Mason University that also developed the Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index (hence GEDI), this new index insist of 30 evaluation factors, aggregated into 15 pillars and three main environmental elements: entrepreneurial environment, entrepreneurial eco-system and entrepreneurial aspirations. The pilot effort assessing the individual, institutional and legal environment for high-potential women’s entrepreneurship includes 17 countries – picked to represent a variety of regions and development contexts. Who came out on top? Here’s the list:

  1. United States
  2. Australia
  3. Germany
  4. France
  5. Mexico
  6. United Kingdom
  7. South Africa
  8. China
  9. Malaysia
  10. Russia
  11. Turkey
  12. Japan
  13. Morocco
  14. Brazil
  15. Egypt
  16. India
  17. Uganda

This new analysis was underwritten by Dell, and released today at their 4th annual Women’s Entrepreneur Network gathering in Istanbul, Turkey. Womenable was pleased to have played a role as an advisor on this effort, and we look forward to expanding the analysis to additional countries in the future (pending funding, of course!)

Click on these links to learn more about Gender-GEDI, a news release summary of the findings of this important new analysis, and to download and read the 22-page white paper.