THE STATUS OF STATISTICS ON WOMEN AND MEN’S E NTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE UNECE REGION

1. Workshop on Improving Statistics on SMEs and Entrepreneurship OECD- Paris 17-19 September 2003 THE STATUS OF STATISTICS ON WOMEN AND MEN’S ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE UNECE REGION Costanza Giovannelli, Hrund Gunnsteinsdottir, Angela Me UN Economic Commission for Europe - Statistical Division

2. Changing the focus… From characteristics of enterprises to characteristics of people managing/owning the enterprises

3. The questionnaire Questionnaire to National Statistical Offices in the ECE region: • Official statistics • Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SME) Entrepreneurship NOT only in the context of SME Three main sections: i) availability of selected indicators ii) sources and methods iii) dissemination

4. Why is it important to study entrepreneurship and gender in SME context? • More self-employed women are involved in the SME sector creating new job and contributing to poverty reduction • Emerging role of women

5. Definitionof Entrepreneurs • Owners • Managers • Executive directors, central board executives …more generally: • those who were involved in the establishment of the business • those responsible for its development Business and Entrepreneurship Survey (Ireland):“an owner, part-owner and/or the principal manager responsible for the expansion and strategic development of the business”

6. Definitionof Entrepreneurs • Lack of common frameworks to define entrepreneurs • Difficult to translate the concept of entrepreneurship into statistical measures using existing data collections Studies on entrepreneurship are based on a assortment of indicators according to the available sources

7. Indicators on Entrepreneurs Managers Self-employed Employers Own-account workers Members of Ex. Boards Owners

8. Information can be found in…. Households • Status in employment • Self-employed • Own-account workers • Employers • Occupation • Managers • People in supervisory position Enterprises • Owners • Executive Directors

9. Households Sex disaggregated data Characteristics of the entrepreneur No information on type of enterprise Difficult to measure owners Information can be found in…. • Enterprises • Information on type of enterprise • Gender is not always collected • Registers are not fully reliable in all countries • Registers or surveys may be limited to certain types of enterprises • Not for statistical purposes

10. The Availability of Statistical Indicators

11. Self-employment: caution Self-employment, employers and own-account workers; women as a percentage of women and men; agricultural sector as a percentage of total employment, some ECE countries – 2001 (a) 2000 Source: UNECE – Gender Statistics Database

12. Problems and gaps Use of several sources: • Lack of comparability, different classifications for example in Poland the classification of the status in employment used in the enterprise survey is different from the one used in the LFS • Coverage issues • Registers are of limited use in countries with a large informal economy • In existing sources, the challenge is to have sex disaggregated data

13. Future challenges in official statistics • To identify the policy relevant issues of women and men entrepreneurs in order to clarify the objectives of the data collection • To reach an agreement on a working definition or a common framework on entrepreneurship and other relevant key concepts • To harmonize among countries and within countries statistical concepts related to the collection and dissemination of data

14. Future challenges in official statistics • To incorporate the gender dimension in the collection and dissemination of SME statistics • To identify expertise and best practices in the region, which could be used as a basis for the standard ways in which official statistics on women and men’s entrepreneurship will be collected by NSOs in the region