“Economic Cooperation through Women Entrepeneur within BSEC” Gülseren Onanç KAGİDER

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

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

3. Meeting of Council of Minister

4. 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

5. Fever Women Entrepreneurs and wage Employed

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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)

11. 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

12. Thank you….