UniS scheme for women in business is a winner
by Caroline Bullock, Surrey & North Hampshire Business News Extra, Summer 2005

A pioneering research project to address the shortfall in female entrepreneurs across the region has been unveiled at a University of Surrey conference.

Managed by Unisdirect, Training Women to Win aims to identify and find solutions to some of the traditional barriers facing women when attempting to set up their own business.

Addressing delegates at the seminar, the chief executive of SEEDA (South East England Development Agency), Pam Alexander, said it was critical to raise levels of female entrepreneurial activity in the South East which was not only lagging behind the success rate of female entrepreneurs in the US, but was in fact lower than the national average.

The assistant director of Business Skills and Services at Unisdirect, Debbie Lock, whose team founded the research project, explained: "Some of the themes we have found from the survey is that women's perceptions of entrepreneurial capability is often very low.

"A poor belief in their own ability and a feeling of being out of place in the business world or not wanting to appear aggressive or pushy."

And research showed existing business support services on offer for women in need of start-up advice were inaccessible, confusing and often failing to deliver.

A "one size fits all" approach, lack of female entrepreneurial role models, ineffective follow-up advice beyond the critical start-up phase and concern over the variable standard of business advisors were all cited as problems experienced by respondents of the survey.

For Tracey Carr, founder of Guildford-based company, Eve-olution, which looks at ways of enhancing male and female working relations, the findings are a familiar story.

Despite being one of success stories she had to overcome a number of obstacles to build up her successful enterprise.

A stint in the USA brought home the extent of the UK's short- comings in promoting female entrepreneurs in the corporate world. She believes a lack of female entrepreneurial role-models is central to the problem.

She said: "In America there was much more entrepreneurial activity and greater numbers of role models to learn from.

"Men have far more role models in all sorts of areas, such as their work, their peer group and their father.

"Women also find it difficult going to male superiors when in need of advice particularly with female-orientated problems regarding childcare etc.

"I'm a single parent with three children and therefore know exactly what it's like for women trying to balance everything."

Eve-olution is the only company in the UK which assists companies with achieving a balanced and diverse workforce through a number of development initiatives as well as leadership coaching for women and has clients across the world.

But despite the success of her company, Carr has still come up against barriers with her plans for expansion.

"We're trying to create a national brand with the company and have found that obtaining venture capital from investors can be a closed shop," she said.

"Often the network is about who you know and it's often something women can be shut out of and are naïve over what they need to know."

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