Press Release – RE-FEM – Upskilling pathways for REsiliency in the post-Covid era for FEMale Entrepreneurs

Feb 14, 2023

Women entrepreneurs still constitute only 1/3rd of entrepreneurs in the EU Member States; and the COVID-19 pandemic has even worsened their situation for maintaining their businesses and posed further challenges in reconciling work and private life.

The circumstances caused by COVID-19 also bring forth the need for women entrepreneurs to be flexible, and resilient, improve digital skills, and effectively apply crisis management strategies. Entities are hardly recovering from the impact of the pandemic, a global energy crisis placed new burdens and difficulties for them to overcome.

Building on the achievements of the Erasmus+ project called ifempower, the RE-FEM project aims to address gender inequality in entrepreneurship and unequal access to learning opportunities, especially for those with fewer opportunities, based on social, and economic barriers, educational obstacles, or disadvantages stemming from geographical location.

Overall, RE-FEM responds to women entrepreneurs’ current needs, especially those in vulnerable situations, relevant for the post-COVID digital era and due to the current turns in economy, to the energy crisis, by

  • conducting comparative research to gain a deeper understanding of the challenges women entrepreneurs have to face in the post-pandemic area focusing on specific aspects of the situation of women with fewer opportunities;
  • building capacity for trainers/adult educators/mentors working in the field of women entrepreneurship to be able to support and develop women entrepreneurs in their adaptation to the post-pandemic area;
  • enriching adult education on women entrepreneurship with innovative and transferable tools, the project will create inclusive and accessible training materials, methodologies and an online platform for entrepreneurship training;
  • enhancing the skill and competencies of women entrepreneurs through tailored activities and a dedicated network to gain the necessary skills and knowledge to have resilient businesses and to accommodate their SMEs to new business models;
  • formulating policy recommendations to define directions for adult education, entrepreneurship, and the labour market to support women entrepreneurs in building and managing resilient businesses in the age of digital transformation.

The 3-years long project will be implemented with a partnership of 7 other organisations under the lead of HETFA Research Institute and with the participation of

Implementation period: 01/11/22-31/10/2025

This project is funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union. The European Commission support for preparing and publishing this press release does not constitute endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.