ANNE SIMMONS-BENTON AND CAITLIN BYRNE  | 

A stark reality to emerge from the devastation of COVID-19 has been the global decline in women’s economic inclusion and entrepreneurial opportunity.

Women-owned firms failed during the pandemic at higher rates due to the lack of equitable financial and governmental support and uneven support for care, even though these firms were in vital areas of the economy.

The 2021 World Economic Forum’s 14th global Gender Gap Report forecasts that it will now take 135.6 years for women to achieve gender parity—instead of the 99 years that it had projected in 2019, the year before the pandemic struck.

Women’s entrepreneurship is under greater pressure in both developed and developing countries. Numerous multi-country research studies from early 2020 to mid-2022 chronicle the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women-owned and led businesses compared to MSMEs and SMEs owned by men.

Please click here to read the full “Creating women’s entrepreneurial resilience by building forward better” article published at OECD Forum, written by Anne Simmons-Benton and Griffith Asia Institute Director, Professor Caitlin Byrne.