Lawton Idiomas Blog

Staff from Lawton School, as well as partners from Romania, Czech Republic, Portugal, Italy and Lithuania, attended a meeting in Belfast, Northern Ireland, last month as part of an exciting new project – EU Women – which, within the framework of the European Leonardo da Vinci Programme, is aimed at increasing levels of entrepreneurial activity among women throughout the European Community.

While countries such as Spain and Northern Ireland have enjoyed significant increases in the level of female entrepreneurship over recent years, the difference in levels of business start-up between men and women varies greatly from country to country across Europe.

According to recent figures, the gap between levels of male and female business start-up activity is much greater in the new accession countries. The aim of the EU Women project is to address this imbalance by taking best practice in pre-entrepreneurship training from countries such as Spain, and transferring it to countries where levels of female entrepreneurship is currently lower.

The output of the project will be an online course and supporting material, designed to specifically target women who for varying social, economic and cultural reasons might not currently consider entrepreneurship a viable employment option.

Delegates discussed issues such as existing levels of female entrepreneurship in each country and the social, economic and cultural barriers that women face when thinking about opening a business.

The next project meeting for EU Women will be held in Portugal this May.