WITH just over 410,000 households being headed by women in Jamaica, this means that just under 1.7 million Jamaicans likely live in a household with a single income. Before you say that can’t be so, remember that the majority of households headed by women tend to be larger than the average, with more children. Let that sink in.

Couple that with the fact that the majority of working Jamaican women are in the lowest-paying jobs. Layer that with the fact that women are at double the unemployment rate of men, a situation exacerbated since COVID-19. It’s a rough situation for a large group of women in Jamaica.

However, this kind of analysis also provides a great opportunity. Imagine how we can lift the development and growth of Jamaica through strong, targeted interventions designed for women entrepreneurs.

It’s not just money that’s missing for women entrepreneurs

Often we hear about money and training available for micro and small entrepreneurs — men and women. Yet we don’t see the expected lift. Brookings Institute in 2019, in gathering a range of studies on why programmes to empower women entrepreneurs in developing countries often fail, came to some compelling conclusions.

It found that the interventions needed to “move beyond basic access to financial and human capital and also tackle central psychological, social, and skills constraints on women entrepreneurs”. Assessment of comparable programmes in places like Uganda and Tanzania found that providing financial capital — through subsidised microcredit for example — along with “hard skills” business training was effective for men but did not have any impact on female-owned enterprise profits.

Yes, both male and female entrepreneurs often lack access to financial capital and training, and that limits business growth. However, many women entrepreneurs “also have different mindset constraints, such as risk-aversion…and culturally imposed constraints that psychologically and physically impede their independence, aspiration, and priorities”.

Mindset and free childcare during trainings

The World Bank’s Gender Innovation Lab offered psychology-based “mindset” training for both male and female business owners in Togo. The soft skills included self-starting behaviours; innovation; identifying and exploiting new opportunities; goal setting, planning, and feedback cycles; and overcoming obstacles.

Such tailored training topics are critical to success as global data show that women-owned small and medium enterprises globally tend to be concentrated in overall low-profitability or low-growth sectors. Retail, beauty and food services are among the sectors on which women focus. The Jamaican reality is similarly concentrated.

But there is opportunity for far greater economic advancement. When women cross over into male-dominated sectors, as an electrician or plumber, they can earn three times as much as in traditionally female-dominated sectors. As such, opportunity identification and upskilling are key.

Business training sessions, like in Liberia, also accommodated the special needs of female entrepreneurs by ensuring they were in locations that were close to participants’ homes or offered free childcare (while the mothers learned). This enabled greater success of the women entrepreneurs as they had significant unpaid home responsibilities.

Still…show me the money!

Nonetheless, every entrepreneur, every business, needs fuel. They need capital. Whether it’s for Elva to buy a deep fryer to sell fried chicken and fries or for Ava to buy a garbage truck and hire local men and women to solve the chronic garbage and waste collection issues in inner-city communities, sufficient capital at affordable rate or as grants is needed make a good profit that they would likely invest for their families and community.

Let’s encourage the Government to be proactive and put forward proposals that the World Bank’s Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi) can fund. This would lift our economy as we navigate the impact of COVID-19.

Imagine the range of creative proposals that the Jamaica Business Development Corporation, working with the Women Entrepreneurs Network, the Jamaica Network of Rural Women Producers and the Jamaica Bankers Association can design. Only through new partnerships and doing things differently will Jamaica enjoy different and better results.

— Imani Duncan-Price is a former senator, a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, and Eisenhower Fellow. E-mail feedback to fullticipation@gmail.com