One of the principal pillars of WEI’s strategy is to support the development of deeper pipelines of transformational women-owned enterprises led by women in the ‘missing middle’.

Women who pursue entrepreneurial opportunities encounter structural and systemic biases that limit the development, scaling and survival of their business ventures. They are generally constrained to pursuing opportunity and survival investments that are smaller, less profitable, and slower growing than comparable businesses owned by men. These structural impediments and biases – economic, legal, social, and cultural, are well documented. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these challenges for female-led businesses.

In terms of human capital, education is an essential driver for women’s economic empowerment (WEE). Networks and support services, access to capital, digital resources, and an equitable business enabling environment are also critical drivers for WEE. Inclusive entrepreneurship education and training (IEET) offers an important lever for scaling the development and delivery of business competency skills, experiential learning opportunities, and networks for women’s entrepreneurship. WEI is advocating for IEET targeting women and girls at the secondary and tertiary levels of education to help #BreakTheBias.

The goal of WEI-CIEET is to apply a systems and intersectional approach to: 

• Facilitating knowledge sharing, shared learning, and information dissemination;
• Strengthening the design and delivery of IEET courses and programs;
• Reducing gender, ethnic and occupational stereotypes and systemic biases that inhibit women’s entrepreneurship; and
• Building coalitions of policymakers, academics, practitioners, funders, and women’s enterprise organizations to design and advocate for innovative solutions to bias in EET.