Building Connections For Enterprising Women

Enterprising women contribute significantly to the global economy, generating employment and creating economic growth yet there is a dearth of gender specific research, particularly on what supports women require when starting up or scaling up an entrepreneurial venture.

The Building Connections for Enterprising Women project addresses this gap, comparing the contexts for women’s entrepreneurship in a developed and developing economy.

The Centre for Social Impact Swinburne (CSI Swinburne) undertook the project with Good Shepherd Microfinance and colleagues at Swinburne Sarawak over an 18-month period, from August 2017 to January 2019.

The project focused on identifying the supports that are in place for women entrepreneurs in two very different regions: Victoria, Australia and Sarawak, Malaysia. Two research teams collaborated over the course of this project, one based in Victoria (Good Shepherd Microfinance, Swinburne University and Federation University) and another in Sarawak.

Funded by the Australian Government through the Australia-ASEAN Council (AAC) of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the project aimed to develop a long-term collaborative relationship among practitioners and researchers with expertise in women’s enterprise development.

Through a series of forums, roundtables and video conferences to share expertise, the project mapped the enterprise development ecosystem and developed a framework for supporting enterprising women in Sarawak and Victoria.

Three successful roundtable engagements with women entrepreneurs and support organisations were organised in December 2017 and May 2018. The roundtables focused on the current state of the support ecosystem for women entrepreneurs, the challenges, and opportunities for what can be done to improve support for enterprising women in all of their diversity.