Equity beyond just a conversation

Feb 6, 2021 | Ayman Site, reflections, Small Business Horizon Site

Equity beyond just a conversation.

Saturday February 6, 2021, by Ayman El Tarabishy, President & CEO, ICSB

“Equity” is something we talk about in the business and entrepreneurship worlds. Despite this focus, discussions around equity have primarily remained just that — discussions. We have failed to prioritize the action that makes too long equity possible. With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the business ecosystem’s foundations have been disrupted. We have a unique opportunity to remake the entrepreneur’s world in a more just and equitable way. We sit in a memorable historical moment, where there is an unprecedented desire for fundamental, wide-reaching change. Here at ICSB, one of the priorities we have set for the coming year is a renewed focus on equitable embodiment.

One of the core concepts in our understanding of equitable embodiment is empathy. Empathy is often thought of as the “starting point of design thinking,” and it seems perfectly reasonable that this would be a guiding principle in reimagining and reshaping our new world. We must then consider the past mistakes within this restart and rectify them. It is imperative to understand the characteristics of humanistic management, with empathy acting as an essential “driving factor for employee engagement and communicative business culture, leading to a better understanding between organizational members and stakeholders.” Empathy has been overlooked as a potential solution to fundamental issues we face, and we are committed to an empathy-centered approach here at ICSB.

As we consider ways to implement a more empathetic approach, special attention must be placed on the failures that have led us to this moment. Too often, people in charge want to talk about change without disrupting any of their current operations. This leads to an environment where the same people who have refused to create an equitable environment are responsible for implementing change with very little oversight. Going forwards, there must be increased transparency, real checks on power, and methods of accountability for those who fail to live up to the new standard.

The easiest and most efficient way to start this process is to place historically marginalized actors into actual power and institutional influence positions. At ICSB, we have seen the success that businesses and entrepreneurs have when they rely on the experiences of those who have been traditionally overlooked. These groups bring fresh perspectives on issues and the appropriate responses to them. They are often more innovative and frugal because of the restraints that have historically been placed on them. As we navigate a new and emerging world, there is much we can learn from these groups that have too often been ignored.

We understand that the process towards equity in the business and entrepreneurship ecosystems is uneven, and there is no one solution to the issues we face. But we firmly believe that empowering individuals and groups within our network is a simple, righteous step that will have enormous benefits down the road. If done correctly, these bold and straightforward ideas will create a self-sustaining, positive cycle that will continuously reproduce innovative and equitable solutions to past issues, as well as new and emerging ones we have yet to face. With unique perspectives and ideas, putting actual people into positions of power and influence will accelerate progress and show people a real change.

That is why today, I am proud to announce a new and exciting opportunity for those who want to make an actionable impact in these atypical actors’ lives. Today, we are opening up sponsorship opportunities for the ICSB WE program. WE Sponsorship will allow us to bring the education, space, and visibility to women entrepreneurs that they deserve. I invite you all to look at the many sponsorship options available so that you can actively show your contribution to womenpreneurs worldwide.

Join us.

Ayman El Tarabishy

President & CEO, ICSB

The secret letters of history’s first-known businesswomen

Jan 15, 2021 | News | 1, The Latest

New research gives us insights into history’s first well-documented businesswomen, who made their mark earlier than you may think.

Friday, January 15, 2021, by BBC

New research gives us insights into history’s first well-documented businesswomen, who made their mark earlier than you may think.

Friday, January 15, 2021, by BBC

The letters, though tiny, contained a wealth of insight into this ancient world of commerce (Credit: Cecile Michel, Archaeological Mission of Kültepe)

Around 1870BC, in the city of Assur in northern Iraq, a woman called Ahaha uncovered a case of financial fraud.

Ahaha had invested in long-distance trade between Assur and the city of Kanesh in Turkey. She and other investors had pooled silver to finance a donkey caravan delivering tin and textiles to Kanesh, where the goods would be exchanged for more silver, generating a tidy profit. But Ahaha’s share of the profits seemed to have gone missing – possibly embezzled by one of her own brothers, Buzazu. So, she grabbed a reed stylus and clay tablet and scribbled a letter to another brother, Assur-mutappil, pleading for help:

“I have nothing else apart from these funds,” she wrote in cuneiform script. “Take care to act so that I will not be ruined!” She instructed Assur-mutappil to recover her silver and update her quickly. “Let a detailed letter from you come to me by the very next caravan, saying if they do pay the silver,” she wrote in another tablet. “Now is the time to do me a favour and to save me from financial stress!”

Ahaha’s letters are among 23,000 clay tablets excavated over the past decades from the ruins of merchants’ homes in Kanesh. They belonged to Assyrian expats who had settled in Kanesh and kept up a lively correspondence with their families back in Assur, which lay six weeks away by donkey caravan. A new book gives unprecedented insight into a remarkable group within this community: women who seized new opportunities offered by social and economic change, and took on roles more typically filled by men at the time. They became the first-known businesswomen, female bankers and female investors in the history of humanity.

‘Strong and independent’

The bulk of the letters, contracts and court rulings found in Kanesh date from around 1900-1850 BC, a period when the Assyrians’ trading network was flourishing, bringing prosperity to the region and giving rise to many innovations. The Assyrians invented certain forms of investment and were also among the first men and women to write their own letters, rather than dictating them to professional scribes. It’s thanks to these letters that we can hear a chorus of vibrant female voices telling us that even in the distant past, commerce and innovation were not the exclusive domains of men.

While their husbands were on the road, or striking deals in some faraway trading settlement, these women looked after their businesses back home. But they also accumulated and managed their own wealth, and gradually gained more power in their personal lives.

“These women were really strong and independent, because they were alone, they were the head of the household while the husband was away,” says Cécile Michel, a senior researcher at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, and author of the book, titled Women of Assur and Kanesh. Through more than 300 letters and other documents, the book tells a strikingly detailed and colourful story of the women’s struggles and triumphs. Though brimming with drama and adventure, the clay letters themselves are tiny, about the size of the palm of a hand.

The businesswomen’s story is tied to that of the Assyrian merchant community as a whole. In their heyday, the Assyrians were among the most successful and well-connected traders of the Near East. Their caravans of up to 300 donkeys criss-crossed mountains and uninhabited plains, carrying raw materials, luxury goods and, of course, clay letters.

“It was one leg of a huge international network, which started somewhere in Central Asia, with lapis-lazuli from Afghanistan, carnelian from Pakistan, and the tin may have come from Iran or further to the east,” says Jan Gerrit Dercksen, an Assyriologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands, who has also worked on the Kanesh tablets. Foreign traders brought these goods to the gates of Assur, along with textiles from Babylonia in southern Iraq. They were sold to the Assyrians, who packed them onto caravans bound for Kanesh and other towns in the Anatolian region in Turkey, where they were sold for gold and silver.

Complex financial instruments facilitated this trade, such as the “naruqqum”, which literally means “bag”. It refers to a joint-stock company in which Assyrian investors pooled their silver to fund merchant-led caravans over many years. The merchants also developed a lively business jargon. “The tablet is dead” meant that a debt had been paid and the clay-tablet contract recording it was therefore cancelled. “Hungry silver” referred to silver that was not being invested, idly sitting around instead of generating a profit.

They really are accountants; they know perfectly well what they should get back in exchange for their textiles – Cécile Michel

Assyrian women contributed to this bustling commercial network by producing textiles for export, issuing loans to merchants, buying and selling houses, and investing in naruqqum schemes. Their skills as weavers allowed them to earn their own silver. They kept a keen eye on foreign fashions and market trends to secure the best prices, as well as on taxes and other costs that dented their profits.

“They really are accountants. They know perfectly well what they should get back in exchange for their textiles. And when they earn this money from the sale of their textiles, they pay for the food, for the house, for daily life, but they also invest,” says Michel, who has also co-created a new documentary about the women.

‘Guardians of the archives’

This commercial acumen allowed some to slip into positions that were unusual for women at the time, by functioning as their husbands’ trusted business partners. The traders in turn benefited from having literate and numerate wives who could help with day-to-day business as well as emergencies. One Assyrian merchant writes to his wife, Ishtar-bashti: “Urgent! Clear your outstanding merchandise. Collect the gold of the son of Limishar and send it to me… Please, put all my tablets in safekeeping.” Others ask their wives to pick specific tablets from the household’s private archives to find financial information or settle a business matter.

“Since they were the ones to stay at home, they were the guardians of the archives,” Michel says of the women. “You have to remember, these contracts represent a lot of money, for example the loan contracts and so on.”

The women in turn don’t shy away from sending their husbands or brothers instructions and admonishments. “What is this that you do not even send me a tablet two fingers wide with good news from you?” an Assyrian woman called Naramtum writes to two men. She complains about a dispute involving debt and lost merchandise, and urges the men to resolve it, closing with a brisk: “Send me the price of the textiles. Cheer me up!” Another chided her brother over a missing payment: “Don’t be so greedy that you ruin me!”

These women’s independence stood in stark contrast to some other societies in the ancient Near East, such as nearby Babylonia in southern Iraq. Michel points out that in Assur, as in Kanesh, both the wife and the husband could ask for a divorce and would be treated the same in the proceedings. “But at exactly the same time in Babylonia, in the south of Babylonia, the wife couldn’t ask for a divorce, and in the north of Babylonia, if she dared to ask, she would be put to death.”

With that strengthened economic influence came better conditions in the women’s personal lives. A number of them added clauses to marriage contracts that banned the men from taking second wives or travelling by themselves, as in this example: “Assur-malik married Suhkana, daughter of Iram-Assur. Wherever Assur-malik goes, he shall take her with him. He shall not marry another woman in Kanesh.”

At some point, for reasons that are somewhat unclear, trade between Assur and Kanesh declined. Eventually, Kanesh was deserted. Other cities and communities took over as engines of commerce, creativity and cultural exchange. But the women’s clay tablets, hardened by house fires, remained in the abandoned homes to be discovered thousands of years later. They capture a female experience so rarely documented in history, not of queens or high priestesses, but of working women wondering how to get through the next day. As Michel says, in other Mesopotamian cities, letters written by women have also been found, “but there are not so many. [Kanesh] is unique for that.”

And with roughly half of the tablets of Kanesh still unread, there are surely many more secrets waiting to spill out.

The ancient city of Kanesh, also known as Kültepe mound, in what is now Turkey (Credit: Archaeological Mission of Kültepe Archives)

Female Business Leaders, Business and Cultural Environment, and Productivity Around the World

Jan 13, 2021 | News | 1, The Latest

Female Business Leaders, Business and Cultural Environment, and Productivity Around the World

Wednesday, January 13, 2021, by World Bank Group

Female Business Leaders, Business and Cultural Environment, and Productivity Around the World

Wednesday, January 13, 2021, by World Bank Group

While women are beginning to get ahead of men in selective countries in a few areas, such as college admission, in both high-paying and leadership jobs, women continue to lag significantly behind.

Studies of female business leaders and economic performance are rarely conducted with worldwide observational data, and with considerations on the underlying cultural, institutional, and business environment. This paper uses worldwide, firm-level data from more than 100 countries to study how female-headed firms differ from male-headed firms in productivity level and growth, and whether the female leader performance disparity hinges on the underlying environment. Female-headed firms account for about 11 percent of firms and are more prevalent in countries with better rule of law, gender equality, and stronger individualistic culture. On average, female-headed firms have 9 to 16 percent lower productivity and 1.6 percentage points lower labor productivity growth, compared with male-headed firms. The disadvantage is mainly in manufacturing firms, largely nonexistent in service firms, and present in relatively small firms. Although the female leader performance disadvantage is surprisingly not related to gender equality, it is smaller where there is less emphasis on personal networks (better rule of law, lower trade credit linkages, lower usage of bank credit, and more equalizing internet), less competition, and the culture is more collective. The study does not find that the female leader disadvantage is amplified in corrupt environments. Africa differs significantly in that it features lower female disadvantage, stronger female advantage in services relative to manufacturing, and stronger sensitivity of female business leaders to electricity provision and bank credit access. (Read more…)

USAID Scholars Activity Offers Scholarships to 140 Public School Students this Year to Study at AUC, Egyptian Universities

Jan 5, 2021 | SME World Forum Site, The Latest

USAID Scholars Activity Offers Scholarships to 140 Public School Students this Year to Study at AUC, Egyptian Universities

January, Jan 5, 2021, by AUC Egypt

AUC recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Egypt’s Ministry of Education and Technical Education to promote the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Scholars Activity program in schools.

The USAID Scholars Activity, implemented and managed by AUC, is offering scholarships to 140 Egyptian public school students in the 2020-2021 academic year to study at AUC and Egyptian public and private universities. AUC’s partner universities in the program are Ain Shams University, Alexandria University, Cairo University, Assiut University, Mansoura University and Zewail City of Science and Technology.

“We are happy with the opportunities that the USAID Scholars Activity program provides to thanawiya amma high school students and proud of the 140 students who received the scholarships this academic year,” said Egypt’s Minister of Education and Technical Education Tarek Shawki. “The ministry spares no effort to develop the skills of our students by providing them with all the available excellent educational opportunities.”

The $36 million USAID Scholars Activity targets 700 students from Egypt’s 27 governorates over 10 years. The students are identified by high academic excellence, leadership potential and financial need. For the first cohort, the program’s majors are agriculture, energy, water, computer science, environmental engineering, journalism, data science, business and economics.

“We look forward to our collaboration with the Ministry of Education,” said AUC Provost Ehab Abdel-Rahman. “Such collaboration will ensure that talented students in public schools will have an opportunity to apply to the USAID Scholars Activity program and get a chance to excel in their chosen fields of study.”

The USAID Scholars Activity will cover five consecutive cohorts, and the selection process commits to gender balance and overall accessibility. This year, 65 female and 75 male students, including 13 students with disabilities, joined the cohort to advance diversity and higher education inclusion.

AUC has welcomed 25 students this year. Assiut, Mansoura and Ain Shams universities have each welcomed 23 students, while 22 students have joined Alexandria University, 17 have joined Cairo University and seven have joined Zewail City of Science and Technology. This year, 24% of students chose an engineering major as their top major of choice, followed by agriculture.

This collaboration between USAID and AUC contributes to Egypt’s 2030 Sustainable Development Strategy by instilling the pillars of knowledge, innovation and scientific research, economic development and environmental responsibility in the activity’s core infrastructure.

Centering Innovative Solutions for Tangible Change

Dec 26, 2020 | Ayman Site, Small Business Horizon Site, The Latest, World Congress Site

Centering Innovative Solutions for Tangible Change

Saturday, December 26, 2020, by Ayman El Tarabishy, President and CEO of ICSB

Abstract blue geometric background. Touch to electronic display. Virtual reality. Skeleton image of a human hand.

In conjunction with last Saturday’s Reflection on the importance of Research with Impact, this week’s Reflection challenges us to think about ways to implement innovative solutions that focus on providing explicit, material benefits and resources to those who need them most.

Here at ICSB, we strive to be a useful and impactful resource for MSMEs and other individuals looking for an informed, educational, and empathetic analysis of the current business ecosystem. We believe that our focus on Humane Entrepreneurship and our emphasis on empowering atypical actors in the current business environment provides a blueprint for the future while maximizing potential and sustainability in the present.

However, in general, educational resources and knowledge can only be valuable if they result in real, tangible changes to our day-to-day realities. The rapid advancement of technology and the explosion of the digital economy have multiplied how businesses and entrepreneurs can make an impact and translate their knowledge and lived experience into positive social improvement.

This advancement of technology and the opening of new economic frontiers is an encouraging sign for us to believe positive change is necessary and inevitable. Our increased data capacity has led to an explosion of innovative ideas and solutions to problems that have plagued businesses and investors for decades while empowering those atypical actors that have been overlooked for far too long.

We must make sure data do not freeze us. Too often, businesses and entrepreneurs become consumed with collecting and analyzing data in the hopes of crafting a “perfect” solution to the diverse set of challenges we face. The sheer size of the digital sphere has overwhelmed those in power with information.

Is this cautious approach not in direct conflict with the very spirit of entrepreneurship?

The people who take the risk to pursue their passions and interests in the hopes of improving their communities and lives cannot afford to wait for the perfect situation or the right numbers to illuminate the way. Conditions are not always ideal, and the enormous benefit of MSMEs is often felt by those caught up in challenging circumstances. Life is about being bold, trying new things, and pushing forward despite the protests of those around you. Progress is impossible otherwise.

At ICSB, we believe that tying ‘Research with Impact’ to the practice of sustainable and bold innovation is the only way to move toward progress consistently. Just as our research means little without action, we must be sure that our efforts are backed up by proper, people-centered research that emphasizes transparency, accountability, and communal involvement. The relationship between studying the problems and working on solutions must be firm and flexible.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us the benefits of acting quickly and confidently in the face of an overwhelming obstacle and the consequences of pretending that the obstruction does not exist. Putting ideas into practice and providing marginalized, atypical actors with actual institutional power is the only way to ensure the long-lasting impact we make. For too long, those in power have tried to pay lip service to equity and diversity. In the face of our modern-day challenges, talking the talk is no longer good enough from the pandemic to climate change. Together, we must face the challenges of the future head-on and walk towards a better world.

This is why I write to you about the business’s practical side for our last Saturday Reflection of 2020. As we are propelled forward into a new world and a new year, let’s be sure to center the real and actual work of entrepreneurs and small business owners. Through the ICSB Marketplace, a featured program at the 2021 World Congress, we hope to empower this tangible action towards supporting the needs and desires of entrepreneurs because it is here where real entrepreneurship flourishes.

Article by:

Ayman El Tarabishy,
President and CEO, ICSB
Deputy Chair, Department of Management

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