“Economic Cooperation through Women Entrepeneur within BSEC” Gülseren Onanç KAGİDER Women Entrepreneur Association of Turkey BSEC&Konrad Adenauer Stiftung 1 October 2009 Kisinev/Moldova

Concentrations  Gender perspective of BSEC  Women Entrepreneurship  BSEC region as a potential market  Ways of development women entrepreneurship within BSEC

Meeting of Council of Minister

BSEC and Gender Sensitivity?  1 out of 4 “Directorial Staff” ‘s women: Ambassador Sumru Noyan, 2 of 8 “Professional Staff” are women (25%)  Is gender equality an issue or a policy?  Would Economical development / cooperation be possible without women participation?  Thanks to Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung supporting women entrepreneurship

Fever Women Entrepreneurs and wage Employed 5

Why Care About Entrepreneurship?  Entrepreneurship  Contributes to economic growth  Leaps in human progress  Offers potential of greater wealth and upward mobility  Provides an alternative to wage employment  Creates jobs  Basis for sustainable economy and democracy 6

Who is an entrepreneur?  Major personal characteristics of entrepreneurship:  Being able to take risky decisions,  Having both a creative and pushy personality  Being able to predict and foresee,  Realizing the things that others couldn’t have realized,  Showing effective leadership and having positive courage.  who not only thinks and establish blueprints but also chooses to “act”.  Entrepeneurship is a culture that is effected by different factors 7

Factors Influence to become an Entrepreneur  Education  Secondary education is important for women, positively correlated with the firm size  Networks  Information, access to target group, role models  Risk perception  Rewards  Autonomy, financial success, and status 8

Women Entrepreneurs  Women owned firms are  smaller scaled operations in terms of sales revenues  generate more profit per unit of sales revenue  have higher returns to scale which means that women would gain more from increasing their firm size  Active in service, food and agricultural products, clothing sectors  This is because women are  capital constrained  concentrated in industries with small firm size 9

BSEC :Land of Opportunity  350 million people  96 billon US $ Foreign Trade Capacity (UNDP estimation) and only half of this potential is tapped  High potential sectors: textile, clothing, food and beverages, metal products, agricultural products, beverages, paper and printer material, travel services, commercial services (consultancy, education, health care)

Development women entrepreneurship within BSEC  Black Sea Trade and Investment Promotion Program  Match making events within the countries  Support countries women entrepreneurship policies  Utilize EBRD resources for credits to women owned businesses  Cooperatıon could be develop in the following sectors  clothing, food, agricultural products, travel services, commercial services (consultancy, education, health care)  Develop a gender action plan

Thank you….