Argentina ranked sixth among the countries with the best policies for financial access, inclusion, tertiary education and support for SMEs led by women, and showed one of the most inclusive responses in the world to the pandemic, according to the Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurs (MIWE).
In this way, the results of the latest edition of MIWE indicated that Argentina improved its global ranking, moving from position 14 in 2020 to sixth“surpassing most of the richest and most advanced countries,” the analysis indicated.
In addition, the index shows that “Argentina’s response to the pandemic was one of the most inclusive in the world.”
This is the fifth year in a row that Mastercard has presented this index, “which offers an overall assessment of the situation of women in business, finance, education and employment in comparison with their male counterparts nationally and with their peers at the national level. world”.
It pursues the objective of strengthening the economy of women and their contribution to global economic growth, and the survey “calls for the promotion of public policies and private practices that promote gender equality.”
The report maintains that the lack of access to financing is one of the main factors of inequality, and contextualizes that in the framework of the Covid-19 pandemic “in 2020 alone, women lost twice as many jobs as men.”
And according to the Global Gender Gap Report of the Global Economic Forum, “this loss adds another 36 years to the estimated time it will take to close the global gender gap in economic opportunity, political power, education and health.”
Argentina is the only country in the region that appears in the top 20 in the world in the component of the index that refers to training and access to financing.
And “although Argentina shows one of the most pronounced declines in female employment, it is among the 20 countries in the world that has the best policies for financial access, inclusion, tertiary education and support for SMEs led by women,” the report stressed.
The main results of the MIWE 2021 reveal that female employment fell by 5% and male employment by 3.9%.
Of 65 economies observed in the index, 12 register an increase in the Female Entrepreneurial Activity Rate; and in 10 women entrepreneurs outnumber men.