How the G7 Can Help Future Women Entrepreneurs
Patricia Faison Hewlin is an associate professor at the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University.
The Gender Equality Advisory Council for Canada’s G7 presidency has a mandate to advise the G7 on the development of actionable steps for promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment. One of its core priority themes is to prepare women for jobs of the future. The World Economic Forum estimates in its 2016 Report that 65 per cent of primary-school-aged children will take on jobs that are currently not yet created. Preparing girls and women to meet the demands of the ever-evolving global environment is critical, and it must be met with solutions for closing gender gaps in pay, employment and occupations.
Within the G7’s priority theme of preparing women for jobs of the future, there must also be a continued commitment to empower women and girls through business ownership and facilitate their ability to garner resources for building their businesses. For example, although women entrepreneurship is on a steady rise in Canada, and entrepreneurial activity in Canada is second only to that of the U.S., relative to men, women face significant barriers to successfully competing in the marketplace, such as securing access to capital. This is not an issue unique to Canada, and globally the issue is magnified, particularly in developing countries. In response, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged $20-million to the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi), a partnership among 14 countries, eight multilateral development banks and other public and private stakeholders to address financial and non-financial barriers to success among women entrepreneurs in developing countries. Several G7 countries are founding financial contributors.
What is the G7?
The G7 is an informal group of seven wealthy countries that meet each year to discuss issues including international trade, economic considerations such as employment and globalization, climate policy, security concerns, and their approach to the developing world, among other matters. Its members are the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan and the United Kingdom. The group has existed since 1975 when it was founded by six countries; Canada joined the next year. Its meetings are important opportunities for leaders of major world powers to gather, form relationships, and discuss policy objectives. However the group has been criticized for not always following through on its policy goals, because its meetings are informal and decisions are not enforced on member countries.
