The percentage of women in startup companies in Lebanon is very low despite several initiatives to encourage females launch their own businesses, experts said Thursday.
“Our company has so far given around 95 investments to new startups and around 20 percent of these projects are owned by women,” Youssef Hamidaddin, CEO at investment company Oasis 500, told participants in the New Arab Women Forum aimed at discussing challenges facing women entrepreneurs in the Arab region.
“We usually receive an equal number of applications by men and women but we mostly select people with good knowledge in information technology, which is a field usually controlled by men,” he said.
Hamidaddin stressed that startup companies need full devotion and long hours of work.
“Having a startup requires a great amount of time to be dedicated for traveling and spending long hours in the office. This is usually the role of men in our societies,” he added.
In Lebanon, the business and banking community in general is denominated by men, although the number of women occupying key posts in banks and companies have risen in the past few years.
Some of the speakers attributed the small number of female entrepreneurs to their devotion to children and families.
Rana Salhab, regional talent and communications partner at Deloitte in Lebanon, said one of the biggest challenges facing women entrepreneurs specifically is the need to commit to their families’ demands, which reflects negatively on their careers.
“A lot of successful women stop at a certain stage in their career life because they feel the need to dedicate a lot of time to their families’ needs,” she said.
Some Lebanese banks have offered soft loan programs to women to encourage them to start their own small business in a bid to generate more revenue for the family.
Mohammad Choucair, president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Beirut, called on banks to provide female entrepreneurs with soft loans over a long period of time to encourage them to launch new ideas and grow their businesses.
“Women were capable of proving over the past few years their success in the business field despite the fact that their representation in political life is still minimal,” he said.
“However, banks can support them further by providing them with financial facilities,” he added.
The speakers also touched on the need to improve education and introduce new curriculum to produce a new breed of entrepreneurs.
“Education must be reformed. I, personally, did not learn any entrepreneurial skills at university in Lebanon but I gained them during my experience in the U.S.,” said Habib Haddad, CEO at Wamda.
Wamda is a platform designed to empower entrepreneurs in the MENA region through financing in addition to developing products and programs necessary for the growth of businesses, as well as facilitating connections through a media platform.
Haddad said that acquiring good knowledge and gaining entrepreneurial skills comes before funding, and they are even more important.
Haddad said that the ecosystem is ready to welcome women in the entrepreneurial world but the main challenge is the need to prepare them to engage in such a sector.
“The problem with women today is that they tend to take artists rather than successful entrepreneurs as role models,” he said.
Salhab said that courses on entrepreneurial skills should be given to students starting from high school.
She said that Deloitte has succeeded in partnering with NGO Injaz in launching the Be Entrepreneurial curriculum, which teaches entrepreneurial thinking and skills development to high school and university students.
Former Finance Minister Jihad Azour, who was the moderator of the session, cited Berytech Fund II as an example of funds specialized in supporting SMEs. Berytech launched Wednesday its second fund for $51.5 million to support startups in growing their businesses and creating new job opportunities, with financing from over 18 banks in Lebanon.
The forum, which was organized by Al-Iktissad Wal Aamal Group in cooperation with Al-Hasnaa Magazine, saw the participation of MP Bahia Hariri, who said that people in the Arab world are in dire need of increasing their productivity by adopting innovation in their lifestyle. “Innovation in the Arab world is very important nowadays, especially that Arab refugees constitute around 50 percent of the total number of refugees in the world,” she said, adding “This should encourage women entrepreneurs to succeed in a bid to overcome these difficult circumstances.”
For his part, French Ambassador to Lebanon Patrice Paoli cited the actions taken by the French embassy during the past few years with regard to enforcing women’s rights in Lebanon. He said that the French embassy launched The Young Ambassadors initiative, which aims to create a platform for discussions about this topic among young students. “These discussions were very active among the youths,” he said.
Paoli added that the French Embassy has also financed a number of projects in favor of women implemented by NGOs in the economic and social fields.
