The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) new Development Matters website recently featured an article by Hanne Melin, eBay Director of Global Public Policy, titled, “The Online Platform, Trade, MSMEs and Women: Lessons from eBay towards user-driven economic empowerment”. The article contends that the transformation of world trade through internet-enabled platforms into an economic activity inclusive of the smallest enterprises and firms from less economically advanced areas also provides a tool for strengthening women as economic actors.
The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) reports that the number of women running their own business is growing. However, female-owned enterprises generally perform less well than male-owned enterprises and, in poorer communities with high competition for low-level jobs, women are more likely than men to start a business out of necessity because they lack options for sustainable livelihoods.
Hanne notes that the online commerce platform is uniquely suited to help women entrepreneurs strengthen their business opportunities by supporting enterprise formation in the retail sector, by small firms, and in smaller towns and cities. Moreover, according to the GEM, female entrepreneurs display relatively low international ambitions. Platform-based exporting is today the only proven way for a meaningful number of small businesses, at low cost, to diversity their business through an international customer base. Illustrating the opportunity, the article briefly features three women from different parts of the world, who have leveraged the online commerce platform to build international businesses to supplement their household income, become their own boss or take themselves out of unemployment.
The platform-based business strategy is a bottom-up approach to economic empowerment, driven by the entrepreneur and made possible through: (1) internet connectivity at low cost without gatekeepers; (2) access to global and online platform-based marketplaces and payments services; (3) availability of logistics and postal networks, globally and seamlessly connected at the parcel-level; and, (4) public policy and legal instruments supportive of direct MSME-to-consumer global commerce. The Policy Lab uses the term the “Global Empowerment Network” to capture these four empowerment enablers as a system, and the article concludes with policy recommendation that would allow more firms to leverage the Global Empowerment Network.
Read the full article here.
OECD’s Development Matters website offers a platform through blogs for open and informed discussions on pressing development opportunities and challenges. Drawing on contributions from policy makers, opinion leaders, experts, private sector and civil society representatives in developing and OECD countries, Development Matters builds a robust conversation not only between countries and a diverse range of stakeholders, but also across policy areas. eBay is proud to partner with the OECD.