Why FEMENIN?

Entrepreneurship development is an important requirement for achieving the goal of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth as set out in the Europe 2020 strategy. Inclusive entrepreneurship policies and programmes are particularly relevant for women who continue to face challenges in the labour market and are under-represented in entrepreneurship activities.

Effective and targeted business support schemes have an important role to play in supporting migrant women entrepreneurs and fostering their integration. Nevertheless, migrant women face specific challenges when setting up and running a business, including access to: information and training; networks for business purposes; and financial skills (EC.2016). In addition, there are common barriers migrant women face to improving their financial literacy which fall into four broad categories: social and cultural, physical, educational and financial.

The OECD define financial literacy as a combination of the awareness, knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours necessary to make sound financial decisions and ultimately achieve individual financial wellbeing.  Financial literacy improves migrant women’s management of their personal and household finances and empowers them to choose and access appropriate financial services and products, as well as to develop and manage entrepreneurial activities.  

Financial literacy is complementary with other skills more related with business management, including economics. The combination of both types of skills can contribute to increasing the survival rate of start-ups and businesses promoted by migrant women. Also, by improving financial literacy, other foundational life skills such as numeracy and literacy, communication and digital skills as well as information searching skills will also be improved. In turn, these will boost confidence, improve income generation and help migrant women to alleviate possible situations of exclusion and gain more equal education and labour opportunities.