Women’s Entrepreneurship Accelerator (WEA)

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The Women’s Entrepreneurship Accelerator (WEA) is a multi-partner, multi-year initiative established by the United Nations in 2019 to inspire, educate, and empower women entrepreneurs around the world.
What are the main aims and objectives?

The mission of the WEA is to eliminate barriers for women entrepreneurs around the world by building an ecosystem for women’s economic empowerment that fosters growth, sustainability and resilience for female entrepreneurs. The WEA has set a target of economically empowering 5 million women by the end of 2030 through the delivery of capacity building workshops, creating knowledge products and advocacy.  

WEA also aspires to be a leading expert on tackling the unique challenges that female entrepreneurs face and to develop innovative solutions to the following challenges: barriers to financial products and services; lack of knowledge and information; lack of education; and barriers to high value markets. The ultimate goal of WEA is to be available in 192 countries.  

How does the program work?

The Women’s Entrepreneurship Accelerator is currently running 6 projects that cover the themes of learning; digital gender divide; innovation ecosystem; gender-responsive procurement; and formalization.  

  1. Bridging the Digital Gender Divide 

This project is led by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and uses capacity building to equip women around the world with the necessary digital skills for their own economic empowerment. ITU offers access to a high-quality digital skills training program both inexperience and experienced female entrepreneurs from across the world. ITU will also organize an annual open innovation competition for pre-selected winners from the program to develop a wider empowerment system for women.  

  1. Online Entrepreneurship Certificate Programme 

Delivered in partnership with International Trade Centre (ITC) SheTrades and Mary Kay, this free program delivers 27 interactive modules with 200 videos covering seven key stages of business development.  Through the course participants learn how to design and set up an economically viable business through skills such as adopting an entrepreneurial culture, designing a pitch, preparing a business model and identifying sources of funding.  

  1. Efficient advocacy through WEDs Methodology 

This initiative serves as a platform to encourage governments, corporations, and NGOs to work together to draft and introduce entrepreneurship-friendly reforms. The International Labour Organization’s (ILO) women’s entrepreneurship development (WED) assessment methodology examines the root causes of gender inequality and make recommendations to close legal, social, and economic gaps. 

  1. Community of Practice Engaging the Private Sector & Global Advocacy Tool kit 

WEA has been working with UN women towards establishing the Business Case for gender-responsive procurement (GRP) through the launch of a community of practice in July 2021 in collaboration with UN Global Compact (UNGC) to engage stakeholders from the private sector. Alongside this they have conducted a global survey across sectors on GRP which will form the basis of an evidence-based advocacy tool.  

  1. Building Procurement Capabilities for Women Entrepreneurs and the Private Sector in Europe and Central Asia Region 

UN Women Europe and Central Asia (ECA) has developed a Pilot program to boost female entrepreneurship by building their procurement capacities for bidding opportunities with public and private sectors and strengthening capacities of the private sector entities to develop policies and practices that ensure greater levels of GRP and investment. 

  1. SDG Pilot Village in Waipula, Yunnan Province, China 

The WEA is working with UNDP, UN Women and partners towards scaling the successful Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Pilot Village targeting women’s poverty and sustainable development in Yunnan. This program focuses on entrepreneurship as a pathway to empowerment and used funds provided by Mary Kay to improve the village’s overall business development and supporting infrastructure.  

Eligibility

There are no qualifying barriers to participate.

What is the overall cost?

The UN does not disclose how much is spent on the WEA annually.  

The primary source of funding for the WEA is American company Mary Kay Inc. Additionally, in June 2022, UN Women announced a new partnership with Turkish conglomerate Yıldız Holding worth over $4 million funds that will go directly to supporting women entrepreneurs. This partnership will be guided by and feed into the activities of the WEA.  

How was it implemented?

The global initiative conceived by Mary Kay Inc. is a strategic collaboration developed in consultation with six United Nations agencies: UN Women, United Nations Office for Partnerships (UNOP), International Labour Organization (ILO), International Trade Centre (ITC), UN Global Compact (UNGC), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). 

Timeline: 

September 2019: Deborah Gibbins, Mary Kay’s Chief Operating Officer, announced the Women’s Entrepreneurship Accelerator at the Concordia Annual Summit 

October 2020: WEA leaders release a statement on its one-year anniversary  

September 2021: WEA celebrates second anniversary by announcing Impactful Initaitives to Drive Change for Women Entrepreneurs 

November 2021: WEA announces partnership with WE Empower UN SDF challenge 

January 2022: The Online Entrepreneurship Certificate Programme is announced 

May 2022: WEA published an Advocacy Brief titled “Procurement’s strategic value: Why gender-responsive procurement makes business sense” 

June 2022: Partnership worth $4 million with Yıldız Holding announced 

January 2023: WEA Digital Innovation Challenge is launched 

Timeline

September 2019: Deborah Gibbins, Mary Kay’s Chief Operating Officer, announced the Women’s Entrepreneurship Accelerator at the Concordia Annual Summit.

October 2020: WEA leaders release a statement on its one-year anniversary.

What impact has been measured?

The WEA has not published any evidence to demonstrate the impact of their programs. Similarly, they have not disclosed how many female entrepreneurs have participated in their programs.  

It is unclear how close the WEA is to reaching its goal of empowering 5 million women by 2030. They also have not publicised how close they are to having services reach 192 countries, although it was announced they had formed partnerships with women entrepreneurs across the 54 countries of the Commonwealth.  

What lessons can be learned?
The lack of rigorous assessment of the WEAs impact makes it difficult to draw substantive lessons for programs seeking to replicate its functions. For example, it is not clear that the advocacy work WEA does promoting gender responsive procurement (GRP) is more effective for female empowerment than providing direct funding or mentoring to promising female entrepreneurs. Future projects in this area should aim to track the number of organisations that adopt GRP and monitor the levels of procurement contracts secured by female led enterprises at those firms in contrast to firms that have failed to adopt GRP.  

CURATED BY

Cristina Fernandez

Director for Knowledge + Programming
Global Entrepreneurship Network
United States