The MENA region is home to the highest entrepreneurial inequality between men and women in the world: less than 5% of businesses are women-led, well below the global average of 23% to 26%, and women are more than twice as likely to be unemployed than men.
Among the many constraints women in business face, access to finance earmarked to start or scale up a business operation appears to be the dominant challenge. To be able to achieve gender equality and further empower women entrepreneurs, it remains crucial to focus on changing the mindset of women entrepreneurs along with that of banks, the private sector as well as financial institutions to create a more enabling entrepreneurial ecosystem for women in the region.
As a result, the banking and financial sector hold significant responsibility and opportunity to contribute to gender equality by adopting gender-sensitive policies, not least by providing tailored financial products and services for women, whilst actively promoting and supporting women entrepreneurs and business leaders.
The Union of the Mediterranean, in partnership with the Union of Arab Banks and in collaboration with prominent international organisations, will hold a conference on the theme: “Closing gender gaps in the MENA financial sector: towards women-led business development”. It will take place on 6-7 March 2024 in Cairo, Egypt.
This event will mark International Women’s Day 2024 and will bring together senior bankers and entrepreneurs from the MENA region to shed light on the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs in scaling up their businesses. These range from gender disparity in funding to lack of support. It will also seek to highlight the ongoing work on narrowing the gender gap in the MENA financial sector towards women-led business development and engage in discussions on promising practices and critical issues to support women entrepreneurs in launching and expanding their businesses.
The event will highlight ongoing initiatives aimed at reducing the gender gap in the MENA financial sector and on promising practices for enhancing the financial and digital inclusion of women entrepreneurs.
The main highlights of the Agenda include:
- Keynote addresses by prominent figures in the financial industry.
- Panel discussions on bridging gender gaps in the MENA financial sector (Gender disparities in access to finance for business creation and development; The role of financial institutions and banks in promoting gender equality; Behind the Female angel investment scene)
- Technical roundtables focusing on financial inclusion (Innovative practices to boost women’s financial inclusion; Women in Fintech: Bridging the Gender Gap; Bridging the gap for international trade and gender equality)
