Measures on access to finance of women entrepreneurs, Belgium
WOMEN
The Federal Government of Belgium has developed a suite of new policy measures to support women entrepreneurs and to facilitate their access to finance. A series of roundtable discussions were held between 2022-23. Stakeholders from the public, private and non-governmental organisation were invited to participate and discussed several broad themes related to women’s entrepreneurship, such as recent trends, access to entrepreneurship financing (e.g. traditional lending institutions, microfinance, private investors), measurement and analysis of women’s access to financing, and a review of best international practices.
While women represent about one-third of the self-employed in Belgium, they continue to face more and heightened barriers to business creation relative to men. Access to finance is one of the key challenges to starting and growing a business for women entrepreneurs. A recent report by FPS Economy showed that women were less likely to have applied for credit compared to men (28% vs. 35%), and women were more likely to request a smaller credit amount relative to their male counterparts - EUR 26 700 for women vs. EUR 33 000 for men (median credit amount in 2020). While some information is available on the barriers faced by women entrepreneurs in access to finance, there is a lack of homogeneous and consistent data on women entrepreneurs’ access to financing in Belgium. More publicly available indicators are needed to design tailored women’s entrepreneurship policy and programmes as well as to monitor and evaluate their impact.
Through the series of roundtable discussions, policy makers and stakeholders developed 25 policy measures to address overarching barriers to entrepreneurship, particularly access to finance, for women. These measures cover three broad themes, which consist of creating a framework to collect gender-disaggregated data (measures 1-6), mobilising private-sector actors (measures 7-18), and improved collaboration among public entities on the federal, regional and community levels to bolster awareness of existing support measures and to strengthen public policy measures across the different levels and remits (measures 19-25).
Many of the measures are in the process of being implemented. Further results are anticipated when the suite of measures has been fully deployed and delivered.
Cabinet du Vice-Premier Ministre et Ministre des Classes moyennes, des indépendants, des P. et de l’Agriculture, des R. institutionnelles et du R. démocratique (2023), Mesure sur l’accès au financement des entrepreneuses, https://economie.fgov.be/sites/default/files/Files/Entreprises/mesures-acces-financement-entrepreneuses.pdf.