08 March 2018, Washington DC, USA -The International Council for Small Business (ICSB), founded in 1955, is proud to take part in celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievement of women around the world, in alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDG 5 aims to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. The #WeUnitedWe movement was created in an effort to promote the Decade of Women campaign and to achieve gender equality and full economic engagement by 2030.
The incoming President of ICSB, Geralyn Franklin says, “ICSB recognizes the important role that women play in society as a whole and especially in small businesses. In that sense, ICSB supports the notion that the world needs to support the development of women entrepreneurs and we are committed to our mission of continuing management education for entrepreneurs and small business.”
The importance of women entrepreneurs to the global economy is tangible. According to the 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, 163 million women were starting businesses across 74 economies worldwide, while 111 million were running established businesses. The upcoming 2019 special issue of Journal of Small Business Management edited by Candida Brush, Linda F. Edelman, Amanda Bullough, and Diana M. Hechavarria focuses on advancing our understanding of high-potential female entrepreneurship around the world. The special issue will feature research presented at the 2017 Diana International Research Conference hosted by the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Missouri. The Diana Project was established in 1999 by Professors Brush, Carter, Gatewood, Greene, and Hart, in partnership with ESBRI in Stockholm. The Diana Project has led the research agenda in women’s entrepreneurship across continents, cultures, and contexts since its inception. During these years, Diana conferences have annually brought together more than 100 scholars from 16 different countries worldwide, providing an arena to share a global research agenda dedicated to answering questions about women entrepreneurs. In 2018, the Diana Conference will hosted in Asia for the first time, and hopes to welcome researchers from the region amongst all others to further advance our understanding of female entrepreneurship (more info can be found here: http://diana-conference.com).