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Equality and Economy - Studies on the impact of microcredit -
Promoting gender equality - Dependency law

	Gender equality in entrepreneurship and access to microfinance

Since 2003 WWB has been a member of the European Microfinance Network (EMN), which brings together 57 players from the microfinance sector of the 21 European countries.

In December 2006 European Microfinance Network, together with nine of its members including WWB, started the project “Fostering Gender Equality: Meeting the Entrepreneurship and Microfinance Challenge", a 15 month long programme, financed by the European Commission.

This project stems from the fact that only 30% of European businesses are run by women. The number of self-employed women is lower than that of men, which in turn limits their potential contribution to the local economy and to social development.

Microfinance has shown itself to be a particularly efficient tool for employment and assistance to women. However, in Europe micofinance organizations have not succeeded in reaching female clients as they have male clients, even though this is not the case in other regions. 45% of the microcredit clients in the European Union are women, 59% in North America and more than 80% in developing countries.

In order to promote gender equality in entrepreneurship and microfinance in Europe, the members have joined forces with a common objective:

	“More microentrepreneurs or self-employed women in the European Union will have access to microcredit, as well as training and support activities, in order to further develop or create their own business at the local level, thanks to a reinforced network of microfinance providers better prepared to work with them”

The project has three parts:

• The analysis in each of the countries participating in the project to gain a better understanding of the external factors influencing women’s businesses, and the specific problems in regards to gender equality in entrepreneurship and to the initiatives in the eight countries participating in the project. Final report.
  
  
• The organisation of exchange visits and the launching of pilot projects developed by the project members, with the objective of developing and sharing good practices and experiences about actions specifically developed to have a positive impact on female entrepreneurs and self-employed women, and the analysis of the impact of these actions.
  Since January 2007, WWB has participated in exchange visits in England (London, Manchester and Liverpool), Germany (Berlin) and Slovakia (Bratislava, Ruzomberok and Lucenec).
  
  
• · The preparation of publications and events to disseminate information on the research studies carried out, good practices and the results of the pilot projects, in order to develop the potential of the European microfinance organisations to promote gender equality. In turn the project results were presented at a Transnational Conference that took place in Madrid on the 13th of December 2007: publications, video about the specific cases of women’s microenterprises and programmes which encourage gender equality.
  

	The following organisations are associated with the project: The European Microfinance Network (France), Banco Mundial de la Mujer (Spain), Women’s Employment, Enterprise & Training Unit – WEETU (UK), Hungarian Microfinance Network (Hungary), The Enterprise Fund (UK), The Integra Foundation (Slovaquia), Fonds de Participation (Belgium), EVERS&JUNG (Germany), Réseau Financement Alternatif (Belgium), Network Credit Norway (Norway).

The project is funded by the European Union DG for Employment Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, as part of the Community Framework Strategy on Gender Equality.

Equality and Economy - Studies on the impact of microcredit - Promoting gender equality - Dependency law