Bangladesh ranks lowest in women's entrepreneurship
Bangladesh ranked at the bottom among 16 countries in the Asia Pacific region in MasterCard's first Women's Entrepreneurial Index in spite of the huge strides taken by the country on this front in the last three decades.
The country had an overall score of 27 out of an ideal score of 100 on the index, lagging behind India (33.3) and Sri Lanka (32.7).
The index measured women's advancement in society -- the rate of participation in the workforce, government, and their inclination on business -- and the available enabling conditions for women, including education, financial influence at home and perceived safety from threat of crimes.
The survey, which covered 16 economies in the Asia Pacific, was released ahead of World Entrepreneurs Day, which will be observed today. The report said developed economies in the Asia-Pacific region provide better conditions for their women entrepreneurs to prosper -- such as high opportunity to attain advanced knowledge and access to mainstream financial services -- compared to emerging markets.
The index also suggests that countries with enabling conditions foster more 'opportunity entrepreneurs', who are driven by a desire to progress, while the countries with less conducive conditions tend to breed more 'necessity entrepreneurs', who are driven by the need to survive.
In developed markets such as New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and Taiwan, which ranked first, second, fifth and sixth, women entrepreneurship is largely driven by strong enabling conditions.
In emerging markets such as Thailand and Philippines, which ranked third and fourth, women's progress as entrepreneurs is driven more by higher levels of women's advancement and entrepreneurship factors such as business leadership and politician representation.
“We have reached a stage of awareness where we realise the importance of women in the socioeconomic development of the society,” said Georgette Tan, senior vice president for communications at Asia Pacific, MasterCard.
The development is more pronounced in emerging markets, where greater economic inclusion of women can bring pivotal shifts in their path to economic betterment.
“However, we still have a long a way to go to transform that realisation into real economic inclusion by eradicating the traditional and obsolete gender roles that are so deeply entrenched in societies, cultures and practices.”
Tan went on to call for a more targeted effort towards developing conditions that support the aspiring entrepreneurs. The index measures female entrepreneurs' ability to capitalise on opportunities granted through various supporting conditions within their local environments.
It is the weighted sum of two components: level of women's advancement and entrepreneurial factors and supporting conditions.
The level of women's advancement and entrepreneurial factors are geared towards measuring the degree of bias against women as workforce participants, political and business leaders, as well as the financial strength and entrepreneurial inclination of women.
The supporting conditions gauge the degree of access women have to basic and advanced knowledge assets, access to basic financial services, women's perception of safety levels and cultural perception of women's household financial influence.
These are in turn derived from 10 indicators, measured on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).
In markets such as Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, where the underlying conditions supporting women's advancement as entrepreneurs are weaker, the overall scores are the lowest. Bangladesh scored 11.8 in the supporting conditions score and 15.3 in the level of women's advancement and entrepreneurial factors.
The index score of 20-30 has been termed as acceptable as well as the component score of 10-20.
The report on the Women's Entrepreneurial Index said the level of women's advancement and entrepreneurial factors is not always positively correlated to the supporting conditions in the market.
This is especially evident in Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan, where the supporting conditions are strong but the level of advancement and entrepreneurial factors are significantly weaker.
Comments