The Code for the Promotion of Women Entrepreneurs verbalizes a commitment to improve women entrepreneurs’ access to tools, resources and funding in the United Kingdom.

The Code tasks signatory financial services organizations (currently 215) to promote female entrepreneurship in the following ways: designating a member of their senior management team to be responsible for supporting gender equality; increasing the transparency of financial services firms’ data on the support provided to women entrepreneurs; and adopting internal practices to improve women entrepreneurs’ access to finance.

Signatories to the Code (e.g., banks, business angels and venture capital funds) manage assets in excess of GBP 1 trillion.

The Code for the Promotion of Women Entrepreneurs continues to grow. As more signatories join, the gender-disaggregated data set increases and covers a larger part of the market.

Thanks to the Code, more organizations are committing to support women-owned MSMEs to access finance and close the gender gap.

Promotion of Women Entrepreneurs

The United Kingdom supports the Women’s Finance Initiative for Women Entrepreneurs (We-Fi).

It is a partnership coordinated by the World Bank involving 14 governments, 6 multilateral development banks and other partners.

Largely inspired by the UK Code, We-Fi is developing the Financing Code for Women Entrepreneurs.

This initiative aims to ensure that financial institutions globally continuously monitor the levels of financing obtained by women-owned MSMEs and take steps to expand financing.

Financing

Currently, governments, international organizations, financial institutions and civil society organizations have undertaken several initiatives to close the gender gap in access to finance.

According to the World Trade Organization (WTO), the vast majority of initiatives focus on facilitating access to finance through the provision of loans, grants or other sources of capital.

In addition, several initiatives provide non-financial assistance aimed at facilitating access to networks, markets and skills.