 |
Source: Dell. Post-it notes show challenges facing women
in the workplace. |
• Singapore is the third top-ranked city in the Asia Pacific region, behind Sydney and Melbourne in Australia for Dell's annual
Women Entrepreneur Cities (WE Cities) Index.
•
Since 2017, all 50 cities studied have improved on the majority of
their indicators year-over-year. Cities in the Asia Pacific region are
improving alongside all other cities globally, recording the biggest
improvement in the
Talent pillar.
• The
Index serves as a diagnostic tool to advise policy-makers on how to better support women in business.
At the 10th annual
Dell Women Entrepreneur Network (DWEN) Summit in Singapore, Dell announced findings from the 2019
Women Entrepreneur Cities (WE Cities) Index, ranking
50 global cities on their ability to foster growth for women
entrepreneurs.
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| Source: Dell. Infographic showing the Dell Global WE Cities rankings for 2019. |
Rankings for Asia Pacific and Middle East cities include:
12. Sydney
13. Melbourne
21. Singapore
23. Hong Kong
26. Taipei, Taiwan
34. Tokyo
37. Dubai, UAE
38. Beijing, mainland China
41. Seoul, Korea
43. Bangalore, India
44. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
47. Shanghai, mainland China
48. Istanbul, Turkey
49. Jakarta, Indonesia
50. Delhi, India
All 50 cities have made progress since 2017, Dell noted. However, some cities made bigger strides than others.
“The 2019
Dell WE Cities report is unique from other
bodies of research in that it not only ranks 50 global cities on their
ability to foster women entrepreneurs, it shows how the cities have
improved from their 2017 benchmark,” commented Karen Campbell,
Consulting Associate Director, IHS Markit.
“This year we can see some patterns emerging. Ranked cities have collectively made the most improvement in the
Capital and
Culture pillars,
which shows the importance of measuring not just the operating
environment but also enabling environment for women entrepreneurs. This
data-driven approach shows where women entrepreneurs still face barriers
in scaling their business.”
Highlights include:
•
Out of a total of 100 possible points, the No. 1-ranked San Francisco
Bay Area in the US only scored 63.7. Dell says that this means there is
still much work to do to level the field for women – and validates the
need for this kind of research and outreach to policymakers to move the
needle for female founders.
• Lack of funding, high
cost of living, low representation of women in leadership roles and the
lack of government-led policies that support women entrepreneurs were
among the barriers globally.
• Thirty out of 50 cities
improved on more than half of their indicators. The most-improved cities
represent nearly every region, which indicates how broad-based the
improvements have been around the world.
“When more women work, economies grow. Technology is helping to drive
this progress as a genderneutral enabler, and helps create a level
playing field,” said Amit Midha, President of Asia Pacific & Japan,
Global Digital Cities at Dell Technologies.
“Whilst all cities in the
Index have
improved, the crucial factor is the consistency of this improvement
across the different factors that impact women entrepreneurs’ success.
The
WE Cities Index helps Dell Technologies get closer to our
customers and understand the landscape in each city so we are better
able to help women entrepreneurs scale their businesses.”
"We’re very excited about what’s been accomplished and what’s on the table," commented Midha at a media briefing. "Ten years ago, it wasn’t possible. Technology is a great new frontier and we are only at the end of the beginning."
Midha said that the size of a company is not as much of an advantage compared to speed and innovation, calling it "a great time to be a startup and a technology business". "We are solving problems that haven’t been solved before. Startups have a better playing field than ever before," he noted.
He highlighted e-commerce provider Zilingo's story as disruptive. "It's female founded, 50% of the board are female, we’re seeing a lot of green shoots come out, that’s fantastic," he said. "There's never been a better time to be a female founder."
In
Asia Pacific (APAC), cities are improving as facilitators of growing
businesses for women entrepreneurs alongside all other cities globally.
The research suggests that APAC can add a collective annual US$4.5
trillion by 2025 – adding significant growth to growth – if women’s
equality is addressed. Similarly, disruptive technologies also have
great potential to push the region ahead as many markets are not faced
with legacy infrastructure issues.
Four APAC cities are in the top 10 of most-improved
for
value of funds awarded to businesses with at least 25% women executives.
In general, a regional challenge remains in the availability of funding
– with contributing factors including lack of
policy, and a lack of awareness that funding specifically for
women-owned/led businesses is
needed.
The research notes that public discussion on
women’s issues is slow compared to the rest of the world, and the
impact of those discussions emerged with less force. There are some
exceptions. Much attention has been on the public discussion of women’s
rights in India, owing
in part to the power of social media in the country, and
in Japan, high-profile
women have spoken out against discriminatory working practices.
Regional highlights include:
• More cities in APAC moved down in rankings, than stayed the same or moved up.
• Cities in the APAC region scored the highest improvement in the
Talent pillar. The region also improved significantly in the
Technology pillar and was the top-improved region for that pillar.
• The median
WE Cities score for the APAC region improved by a score of 0.7, compared to 3 in Europe and 0.9 in North America.
• APAC cities mainly fell behind in the pillars for
Culture and
Markets.
• Globally, Tokyo, Japan ranks second in improvements for women as a percentage of students at top universities, and first for the number of globally top-ranked universities. Tokyo also ranks most improved in number of globally-recognised, successful women business leaders.
• Globally, Melbourne ranks second-most improved for percentage of the population with a tertiary education, and most improved for both percentage of women with a tertiary education and percentage of the labour force employed in IT.
• APAC is the second-lowest region in terms of board members who are women.
Singapore
Singapore ranks in the top half of the
Index and
is ahead of other cities in the region, behind only Sydney and
Melbourne. The country ranks 2nd in improvements for an economic growth
rate
forecast of city, region or country over the next five years. While
Singapore ranked No. 8 in 2017, and No. 21 in 2019, its decline in rank
is not because the city has done poorly, but rather that the competition
has made more
progress.
Talent and
Technology are Singapore’s strongest pillars. Singapore moved from 17th to 11th place in 2019 for
Talent and moving from 10th to 6th place in
Technology. Singapore’s
Talent pillar
benefitted from increasing its top school and business school rankings.
It also increased its pool of professionals needed to help scale
businesses.
Singapore ranks No. 47 globally for
Markets as
it was hampered by a high cost of living and suffered from a lack of
accelerators and relatively few female board members. The
20 by 2020: Gender Diversity on Singapore Boards
report was launched in 2018,
highlighting that as of June 2017, the overall representation of
female directors on boards listed on SGX crossed into the double digits
for the first time in
history. The report also noted that immedia
te action on gender diversity on boards is
imperative for Singapore to maintain its positioning as a leading global
financial centre in
Asia.
For the
Capital pillar, Singapore ranked
No. 25 globally as venture capital funding to female entrepreneurs
increased, but this is still relatively light to other cities.
Singaporean women also saw less crowdfunding, fewer female founders and a
slight decline in high net worth individuals.
At the No. 28 spot globally on
Culture alone, Singapore’s
Culture score
was relatively low due to fewer female role models or leaders amongst
other factors. This said, Singapore is nevertheless more advanced than
majority of its neighbours in the region in actively addressing gender
parity issues.
“Singapore’s strong base in technology
literacy and access to talent position it well to realise its goal in
becoming the world’s first Smart Nation,” added Eric Goh, VP and MD,
Singapore, Dell Technologies.
“This vision requires the
collective effort of the public and private sector, to enable and equip
individuals of all genders as agents of change. By highlighting the
complex challenges that women entrepreneurs face in Singapore, we hope
to be able to drive meaningful conversations and growth as we embark on
this nationwide digital transformation journey.”
In a speech at
DWEN Grace
Fu, Minister for Culture, Community and Youth, Singapore noted that a
lot had changed for women in the past 200 years. She highlighted the
role of Samsui women in building infrastructure for Singapore in the
1960s and 70s, and said that women make up nearly half of the migrant
workforce across ASEAN. Education for women has catalysed "a virtuous
cycle that will benefit the economy," she said.
"Women
are beginning to drive whole sectors of the economy. We are having our
voices heard at all segments of Singapore," she said.
 |
| Source: Dell. Fu speaks about challenges facing women. |
The Singapore government recognises the contribution
that women make to the economy and is supporting the expansion of
choices and opportunities for them, she said. "We don’t want our women
to have to choose between career and family. We want to support them to
have both in their lives, and increasingly men [to have the same
flexibility in choices] too," she said.
Government initiatives include work-life grants to
further develop a workplace that is supportive of flexible work
arrangements, and a drive to expand diversity at the board level, Fu
shared. The government is also looking at solutions to ease the social
pressure on women to leave the workforce early to look after children
and their elders.
"We need women around the table to equally cast our
eyes on the present and the future, and ask ourselves what can we do to
leave behind a great lecacy for ourselves, to create a better place for
our daughters and our grand-daughters so that we will, equally, be the
trailblazers of tomorrow," she concluded.
The 2017 to 2019
WE Cities Index results
highlight the successes and challenges that each city faces, and where
cities can learn best practices from one another. These key learnings,
if supported by local governments, can add up to big changes for
women-owned businesses, globally, said Dell.
Based on the findings and comparison between the 2017-2019 indices, Dell has developed a set of
WE Cities Policy Recommendations focused on three areas, including:
• Access to and the development of financial and human capital.
Specifically, this can be supported through:
- Incentives for individuals and organisations to invest in women-owned companies through
venture funds, corporate venture, private equity and social capital.
- Modernisation of existing government certification, grant and loan programs that help women-owned businesses compete to reflect changing investment models.
- Promotion and marketing of existing government programs to encourage broader awareness and
use.
- Continuing to or start to foster small-business lending programmes.
- Creating new sources of capital such as crowdfunding and impact investments.
- Encouraging enterprises and government agencies to increase supplier diversity with a percentage of contracts being awarded to women-owned businesses.
- Considering a shortening of government payment cycles from 90 days to 30 days for small women-owned suppliers.
- Incentivise the adoption of family-friendly policies including access to affordable child care, elder
care and paid family leave policies.
• Private and public sectors role in increasing access to local and global networks and markets.
This could include:
- Supporting trade agreements that further liberalise trade and open new markets for businesses of
all sizes.
- Promoting global and open standards, and reliable mechanisms for cross-border data transfers
and business support services and networks, while providing sufficient protections for privacy and
information security.
- Supporting mentorship efforts through financial support and encouragement of multiplier
platforms such as accelerators, continuing education and training programmes, and facilitated
networking events.
- Encouraging conscious placement of women on boards, in venture partnerships and on executive
teams.
- Promoting positive success stories of female founders and business owners through the media,
conferences and leadership movements.
• How government and business leaders can help women entrepreneurs thrive in the changing face of technology, for example through:
- Streamlining the process of partnering and applying for government resources,
- Emphasising science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and digital literacy in
education and early training programmes.
- Working with business leaders and educators to encourage technology training programmes to end
unconscious biases in the STEM fields, government, corporations and institutions.
- Enabling access to broadband globally.
- Increasing awareness of options women have to the hardware, software and digital resources they need to scale their companies.
Dell
partnered with IHS Markit to launch the research to measure a city’s
ability to attract and support high-potential women entrepreneurs. Research for
WE Cities began during the 2016
DWEN Research Symposium. The
successful pilot of the 2016 index led to the scaling for the 2017
index to include 50 cities and in turn the remeasuring and ranking for
2019.
Building on 10 years of research on women entrepreneurs, Dell partnered with IHS Markit to research and rank 50 cities on five characteristics, including access to
Capital, Technology, Talent, Culture and
Markets. These pillars were organised into two groups — operating environment and enabling environment.
The criteria includes the impact of local policies, programmes and characteristics in addition to national laws and customs to help improve support for women entrepreneurs and the overall economy.
The overall rating is based on 71 indicators; 45 of which have a gender-based component. Individual indicators were weighted based on four criteria: relevance, quality of underlying data, uniqueness in the index and gender component.
"When we invest in women, we invest in the future; communities
prosper, economies thrive and the next generation leads with purpose,”
said Karen Quintos, EVP and Chief Customer Officer at Dell
Technologies.
“By arming city leaders and policymakers
with actionable, data-driven research on the landscape for women
entrepreneurs, we can collectively accelerate the success of women-owned
businesses by removing financial, cultural and political barriers."
Dell supports and nurtures a community of female entrepreneurs through the
Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network by providing access to technology, networks and capital. The annual
DWEN Summit was held in Singapore from July 14-16, 2019.
Hashtag: #DWEN
