Dell Women Entrepreneur Network (DWEN) WE Cities Index ranks Kuala Lumpur in top 50 cities to be for women entrepreneurs

Results for 2019 WE Cities Index

Ensuring equal opportunities for women entrepreneurs remains one of Dell Technologies fundamental goals in line with their credo to do good which has resulted in their exceptional 2020 Legacy of Good and their upcoming Progress Made Real vision roadmap for 2030. This time around, Dell announced their latest findings on the top 50 global cities on their ability to foster growth for women entrepreneurs at the 10th annual Dell Women Entrepreneur Network Summit.

The Dell Women Entrepreneur Network (DWEN) was established to help positively influence the global economy and help their customers continue to grow. To that end, they discovered that women business owners made up the fifth largest GDP combined but still struggled to access capital, networks and resources to take their businesses to the next level. To assist policy makers on how to better support women in business, Dell Technologies created the annual Women Entrepreneur Cities (WE Cities) Index, the only global, gender-specific study that drills down and indicates a city’s ability to help grow women-owned businesses. 

The WE Cities Index researches and ranks 50 cities across the globe, including Kuala Lumpur (yay!) on five important characteristics which are access to the following –

• Capital
• Technology
• Talent
• Culture
• Markets

This is organised into two groups – operating environment and enabling environment with the final rating based on 71 unique indicators, of which 45 of them are gender-specific.

Results for Dell WE CIties Index

To that end, the study showed several key findings with most cities improving year-over-year though the San Francisco Bay area took the first spot from New York City this year. Top spot aside, Kuala Lumpur was the only Asia Pacific city to be ranked in the top 10 for Market under the operating environment category along with Nairobi and Kuala Lumpur was also ranked 44th on the WE Cities Index.

Other key findings include the following:

• Lack of funding, high-cost of living, low representation of women in leadership roles, and the lack government led policies that support women entrepreneurs were among the barriers, globally. 
• Thirty out of 50 cities improved on more than half of their indicators, with Latin America and Europe seeing the highest percentage of their cities move up. 
• The most-improved cities represent nearly every region, which indicates how broad-based the improvements have been around the world.
• Mexico City had the greatest improvement ranking No. 45 in 2017, moving up to No. 29 this year. In particular, the city increased women in education, at top business schools and in its legislature, and also increased corporate vendor procurement programs and access to capital for women entrepreneurs via crowdfunding campaigns.

Ultimately, these facts can, if supported by local policy makers, help to create positive change for women-owned businesses across the planet. Based on these findings, Dell Technologies has created a WE Cities Policy Recommendations outline that focuses on three critical areas that will be catalysts for future improvement:

• Access to and the development of financial and human capital. 
• Private and public sectors role in increasing access to local and global networks and markets.
• How government and business leaders can help women entrepreneurs thrive in the changing-face of technology.

For more on the Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network, visit their official page here https://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/uscorp1/women-powering-business