A talk bringing together business leaders to discuss strategies for empowering more women to reach senior management and leadership positions in the wider Mediterranean region. The session will introduce to the audience the power of female entrepreneurship, with a focus on the influence of women entrepreneurs from the Mediterranean region.

 The panel will showcase institutions and programmes in the Mediterranean region that have developed innovative solutions to help women entrepreneurs     overcome financing, market and policy barriers to grow their business.

This panel will include multilateral development banks, regulators, financial institutions and international bodies that promote women’s financial inclusion. They will share their experiences in tracking gender-disaggregated data. They will also discuss potential mechanisms to bring together investors, regulators and financial institutions to accelerate lending to women-led firms, as well as issues around definitions of women-owned and led enterprises and harmonization of reporting.

The goal of the panel is to spur collective action and challenge the regional and international financial community to commit to tracking and growing financing to women. Participants will continue collaborating on improving data collection to drive more rapid and systematic scaling-up of financing to women-led SMEs.

It will also answer a key question: how to get funded? The panel will provide entrepreneurs with insights from seed and VC investors across the Mediterranean, and help start-ups understand what investors are looking for at various stages of company maturity.

A talk about the power of the Mediterranean’s young generation, as a crucial force to create opportunities across the region and to attract future foreign investment. We need them to participate actively in the economic development of their countries and the creation of a more diverse and inclusive society

• • How are young women transforming the Mediterranean’s start-up scene?
  • Paving the way forward.
  • Unlocking the potential of women-led start-ups.
  • Closing the gap: the entrepreneurship ecosystem needs more women.

It may surprise some to learn that one in three start-ups in the Mediterranean region is founded or led by women. That’s a higher percentage than in Silicon Valley. Women are becoming a force to be reckoned with on the start-up scene across the region.

Many entrepreneurs from the region believe that technology is one of the few spaces where everything is viewed as possible, including breaking gender norms, making it a very attractive industry for women. We need to support incubators, accelerators, and venture capital funds—through capacity building and training, among others—so they can better help women-led startups and businesses.

Despite the many challenges, including societal pressure on women to stay at home, a digital gender gap, and structural disadvantages in fund-raising and investments, women entrepreneurs are finding new and creative ways to overcome barriers to enter the workforce and start their own business.

As the Mediterranean region assesses how to build new models after the pandemic, women-led start-ups could be part of the solution. Do you want resiliency in the Mediterranean region? Invest in young women-led startups.