ILO - Women Entrepreneurs Development and Gender Equality Project

Women entrepreneurs face gender-based barriers to starting and growing their businesses including discriminatory property, matrimonial and inheritance laws and/or cultural practices, limited mobility, voice and representation, and an unequal share of family and household responsibilities.

These factors, combined with social exclusion based on sex mean that women entrepreneurs are in a less favorable position compared to men when it comes to accessing for example commercial credit from formal financial service providers, more lucrative markets, rather than the traditional local markets, technology and information to establish and grow their businesses, national incentives in small enterprise development through gender blind private sector development and fiscal policies and legislation and training and education for small enterprise development.

(Picture-L) Seltik Heng (ILO Coordinator with TC Ooi (EA). (Picture-R) Woman selling smoked fish in the market at Puok, province of Siem Reap. Cambodia

Women entrepreneurs are, however, not a homogenous group. Often treated as such, groups of women entrepreneurs with less power and voice are often overlooked in small enterprise development initiatives. Women entrepreneurs operating micro and small businesses in the informal economy make a strong contribution to the economic well being of the family and communities. As they remain outside the scope of SME development policies and programmes, their changes of developing lucrative businesses remain slim.

Responding to these challenges, the WEDGE project follows a development and rights-based approach, which aims to satisfy the practical needs of women entrepreneurs, to remove the socio-cultural, legal and political barriers for women entrepreneurship and to advocate for an enabling environment for business development and gender equality.

This is being done through a three-pronged strategy aiming to:

• Create an enabling environment for women’s entrepreneurship development and gender equality
• Build the institutional capacity of agencies involved in women’s entrepreneurship development and gender equality and develop tools and support services for women entrepreneurs.

Implemented within the framework of the ILO Decent Work Country Programme, in Asia, the WEDGE project is operational in Cambodia (since 2005). It forms part of the global WEDGE programme, which is supported by the ILO-Irish Aid Partnership Programme.

Enterprise Asia is committed to providing funds and expertise to run a series of workshops in Phnom Penh and around other provinces in Cambodia to elevate the educational level in enabling the community that is selected to this group. We play an active role to connect specific industry know-how through a network of entrepreneurs in Cambodia and across Asia.

For further information, please contact:

(Ms.) Seltik Heng: National Project Coordinator
ILO,Joint Projects Office, Building F, 2nd Floor, Corner Sihanouk & Sothearos Blvd, Sangkat Tonle Bassac, Khan Chamcamorn, Phnom Penh, Cambodia


Tel: 855-23-220-817