New business chamber launched for women

A group of prominent female business leaders including Professor Marian Baird, Ita Buttrose, Deborah Hutton and Katherine Woodthorpe will sit on the advisory committee of Australia’s first business chamber for women.

The Australian Women Chamber of Commerce & Industry will officially launch tomorrow on International Women’s Day, and has been established with the express purpose of representing female entrepreneurs, who own about 30% of companies in Australia.

Chief executive Yolanda Vega says the group will aim to work closely with existing chambers of commerce, including the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry to grow its membership base.

Vega says many industry lobby groups continue to be dominated by males. For example, the boards of both the Australian Chamber of Commerce and the Business Council of Australia have no female members.

“We hope to be working with all the chambers. I think that the whole idea of starting up the Australian Women’s Chamber is to tap into that 30% of business owners who are being ignored.”

Vega says that while there is a lot of attention focused on businesswomen’s networking groups and the push to increase the number of women on corporate boards, many smaller female-owned businesses are ignored.

The chamber’s stats suggest 90% of female-owned companies have less than 20 staff, but there are few stats on gender-related issues in these companies.

On top of this, Vega argues, many of these women are not being given the opportunity to have their voice heard.

“These women are not only working running their businesses, but they are usually running their home, they have children. They don’t have time to get involved in networking or voice their concerns.”

The new chamber’s first priority is to conduct research into the state of female entrepreneurship in Australia. At the top of Vega’s list of questions she wants to answer is the state of funding for female-owned businesses.

“There is little data on the intricacies of women-owned business. What we do know is they are still having a lot of issues when it comes to obtaining finance and getting their voices hears.”

The chamber, which official launches tomorrow, will have three forms of revenue – membership, sponsorship and government grants.

Vega says she is hoping to work closely with the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry over the coming months.