Annex A: Current PPWE Initiatives

The Women's Entrepreneurship in APEC (WE-APEC) initiative, which was launched in 2014, examined each economy's efforts across government, private sector, and business network services to promote and support women's entrepreneurship.  The findings of the WE-APEC gap analysis under this initiative offered a detailed view of the landscape for women entrepreneurs in the APEC region. The economy assessments can be utilized to strengthen eco-systems that support women's entrepreneurship.  The WE-APEC online platform, www.we-apec.com offers a dynamic directory of service providers for women-owned businesses across APEC and provides a way for governments, the private sector, business networks and entrepreneurs to connect to each other.

The survey on “Good Practices of Women’s Entrepreneurship in Local Communities in the Process of Disaster Reconstruction” as well as the workshop held in March 2015 in Sendai, Japan, on the occasion of the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction highlighted the important perspectives for women’s economic empowerment. These include the need for technical skills and knowledge support; the provision of gender-sensitive services to meet individual needs; the importance of strategic partnership, access to finance and local ownership; fostering management skills including human resource management; and increasing profits, innovation and access to the market.

The “50 Leading Companies for Women in APEC” project aimed to demonstrate practices in improving women’s leadership by showcasing efforts of about 50 companies in the APEC region to empower women in their workplaces. The project can inspire other companies to learn and enhance women’s leadership and representation in their own respective workplaces.

The “Individual Action Plan (IAP) for the Enhancement of the Ratio of Women’s Representation in Leadership” project was launched to promote women's participation in the economy at all levels, particularly on leadership, decision-making and management. The IAPs will serve as mechanisms for measurable and aspirational voluntary goals which economies could work toward by the end of 2020, with a view to assessing progress of ratio of women's representation in leadership.

The PPWE Multi-year Project “Innovation for Women and Economic Development: Facilitating Women’s Livelihood Development and Resilience with ICTs” provides women entrepreneurs an opportunity to exchange views on policies and practices of using information and communications technology (ICT) tools and assist them in establishing and expanding their enterprises.

The Women’s Business Smart Technology Seminar reaffirmed the potential and importance of women’s active participation in the economy through smart technology and promoted the building of knowledge partnerships and formulating regional strategies on the use of smart technology.