Advisory group to study female entrepreneurship in Sask.

A newly formed advisory committee is working to get more women involved in small business in Saskatchewan and tackle some of the roadblocks standing in their way.

The committee was formed this month as a partnership between Women Entrepreneurs of Saskatchewan (WESK) and the provincial government’s Status of Women Office. WESK CEO Prabha Mitchell joined John Gormley on Thursday to discuss the issue of the “entrepreneurial gender gap” in Saskatchewan and what can be done to help level the playing field.

“While men and women start businesses at the same rate, women-owned businesses don’t achieve scale to the same extent,” Mitchell said. “This discrepancy in economic activity and in entrepreneurial activity between the genders causes or creates the gender entrepreneurship gap.”

Majority-female-owned businesses only account for about 14.3 per cent of all small- and medium-sized enterprises in Saskatchewan, Mitchell said, which can be attributed to a number of factors.

Access to capital is a major issue when it comes to the entrepreneurial gender gap, Mitchell said, noting female-owned businesses face loan rejection rates of about 66 per cent compared to a 35-per-cent rejection rate for male-owned ventures.

Mitchell said she’d like to see more women on the investment teams making these decisions, and would like to improve access to business networks for female entrepreneurs to help get a foot in the door.

Another reason for the gap, Mitchell noted, is that the majority of female-owned businesses are in the service sectors, including fields like food service, hospitality, health care, arts, and recreation.

“These are sectors that are characterized by slower growth and lower profitability,” she said.

While the advisory committee will be working to advance women in business, Mitchell said the goal goes beyond inclusivity.

“It’s really a profitability strategy,” she said. “When you have women on boards, when you have female founders, when you have female shareholders in a company, profitability can increase almost by 30 per cent.”