Every year, on 19 November, the world celebrates the Women’s Entrepreneurship Day to empower women in the business sector. Although, currently, there are many initiatives to promote progress in this regard, we are still running behind on the gender equality race. For example, a large gender gap in technology and innovation, where women are still underrepresented, is quite notorious. Hence, the European Innovation Council (EIC) is aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), especially SGD 5 “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” and is actively making efforts to reach a fair future in the workplace.
Gender equality in business: a current overview
Inequalities are worsened during global times of crisis, as the one we faced due to the COVID-19 pandemic and that is now being continued with the Ukrainian war and the overall worsening of the world’s economy. This is highlighted in an article by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Agency, where it is stated that “the COVID-19 crisis (…) has disproportionate economic and social consequences on women and girls because of financial exclusion, the gender digital divide, a greater burden of unpaid care work, and other gender-based inequalities.”. In the same article, an overview on recent numbers also portrays the gender gap in labour force, which is “around 14 percent in the median OECD country, 26 percent in the median middle-income country, and 13 percent in the median low-income country. When women do participate, they often work in lower-paying jobs and sectors and have less access to social safety nets.”.
Delving more into the topic, we looked at the Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The gender snapshot 2022 report that is published every year under the authorship of UN Women and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. This year’s report doesn’t present great news, especially for women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM): “Globally, women make up just 19.9 percent of science and engineering professionals. Such low representation is compounded by a work environment that is typically male-centric, inflexible and exclusionary, making the field less attractive to women and other underrepresented groups.”.
When it comes to women in leadership positions, the Gender snapshot 2022 report tells us that according to 2020 data, “women held less than 1 in every 3 managerial positions (28.3%). Only 47 of the 151 countries and areas with data have reached over 40% representation.”. And focusing on the technology and innovation field, the global largest tech companies have women constituting only 33% of their workforce, while holding only 1 in 4 leadership positions.
Introducing the EIC Women Leadership Programme
To mark this date and bring a new wind of hope to the European women entrepreneurship scene, we decided to highlight the achievements of the EIC’s Women Leadership Programme (WLP). This is a skills enhancement and networking programme for women researchers and entrepreneurs that started in 2021 with the goal of further supporting their role in Europe’s innovation and tech.
The EIC is successfully concluding the 2nd cohort of the programme, that for this edition counted with 84 participants (58 Women TechEU grantees, 19 EIC researchers, and 7 female innovators coming from the European Institute of Innovation & Technology, EIT). During this cohort, the programme hosted 8 trainings & networking events (1 in-person in Bilbao, Spain) and 3 workshops with Mentors, besides the ongoing Mentoring and Coaching schemes.
The programme offers a wide set of services that are built upon: Training Sessions, under different business and personal-growth topics; Networking Events, to expand the participants’ contacts into the business world; a Coaching Scheme, focused on the individual business challenges; and the Mentoring Scheme, to unlock the participant’s career development.
For the programme’s 2nd cohort, the EIC WLP had 68 assigned Mentors working directly with all the participants to share valuable guidance and advice during the 6 months of implementation. We had the opportunity of talking with two Mentors, Begüm Mutuş, Yıldız Holding Public Affairs’ General Manager and Ambassador of Women's Platform, and Eva Dimitrova, Director at Founder Institute Cologne. Begum and Eva shared with us the key learnings they passed on to their mentees for them to thrive as entrepreneurs and leaders:
Begüm Mutuş: The key message I'm trying to share is to develop transparent, talent-oriented, gender-sensitive working conditions and collaborations. In particular, key attributes such as networking, effective communication, delegation and, most importantly, constructive feedback are valuable in all leadership positions and are integral to building authority, respect and trust in your team members.
Eva Dimitrova: One thing I repeatedly see is that we often feel we can’t contribute, or that we shouldn’t contribute, or that we won’t be taken seriously unless we can give all the answers on a given subject. Especially if we’re wearing the hat of an expert. And that just isn’t a realistic expectation. There isn’t a human being on earth - man or woman, expert or not - that has all the answers all the time. So instead of feeling the pressure to know-it-all, we can embrace the learning journey we are all on and state our commitment to keep looking for the answers - on our own or together with the people who are asking us the questions.
If you want to hear live from the participants and key stakeholders that took part in this 2nd Cohort of the EIC WLP, you can join the virtual Awards Ceremony taking place on 18 November, next Friday, from 10:00 to 11:30 CET.
Register now to follow the live broadcast of the event in the EIC Community YouTube channel. The agenda and all the event’s details are available here.
3rd cohort coming up soon
But there is more: A 3rd cohort of the EIC’s Women Leadership Programme (WLP) is coming! Applications for participants and mentors will open in the coming weeks. If you’re interested to contribute as a Mentor, you can already look at the requirements.
More information will be shared soon on the EIC platforms (EIC Community, LinkedIn and Twitter).
About the EIC Women Leadership Programme
Women-led companies are on the rise. The participation of women in deep tech is not only a matter of fairness but an important case of using Europe’s full potential of excellence in science and businesses. The EIC proactively seized this great opportunity for growth: the latest EIC Accelerator calls stated that at least 40 % of applications invited for the second stage of evaluation should come from women (co)founded or led companies. As a result, the number of selected women (co) founded and led companies went from 7% to 34% (compared to the previous EIC call). This contributed to an overall increase in female-led companies from 8% to 15% (blended finance calls only).
To further build upon this, the EIC is offering a dedicated mentoring programme, the EIC Women Leadership Programme (WLP), which aims to level the playing field in scalable businesses and mindsets by unlocking potential and breaking down barriers to success!
