News/Events/Calls

Global WEP Annual Meeting 2025

Posted by Beldina Owalla, March 2025 

The GWEP Annual Meeting was held on 28th February 2025 and below is a brief summary of the key discussion points discussed:

Ongoing Activities - an update of the different events and activities that had taken place during the transition period were highlighted and these included: 

• The Executive Team Meeting held on November 8, 2024

• GWEP-OECD Second Report focusing on Access to Finance – still under review.  

• GWEP Edward Elgar edited book Gender, Diversity & Sustainability: An enterprising perspective (co-editors B. Owalla, D. Nziku, D. Althalathini, S.Abdul-Rahman, T. Vorley) – expected publication May/June 2026

• Rebranding of Global WEP logos and webpage - completed.

• Themed Webinar Series  based on GWEP published book on Women's entrepreneurship in a turbulent era that were held in February 2025

Proposed Governance Structure - the current and future proposed structure of the leadership team was discussed and these comprised: 

• An Executive Team consisting of Prof Colette Henry, Dr Dina Nziku, Dr Alena Křížková, Prof Naomi Birdthistle, Prof Barbara Orser, Prof Susan Coleman.

• Proposed GWEP Regional Leads: 2-3 nominated / self nominated GWEP members for regional coordination, three-year renewable terms.

• Proposed Global Ambassadors: 8-10 members to strengthen links with academic, policymakers, and practitioner communities.

Future Activities/Outputs - members were invited to highlight various topics and areas of interest that could be pursued by GWEP going forward. These ranged from identifying opportunities for future collaborations, as well as topics for themed webinars, roundtables and journal special issues.  The various challenges and possible alternatives were also discussed. Some of the key topics addressed include: 

• Discussion of possible topics for the next collaborative report with OECD as well as the opportunity to organize roundtables involving academics and policymakers.

• Topics for themed webinars and special journal issues were discussed and the need to target different journals to reach wider audience was highlighted.

• Opportunity to convene GWEP at annual conferences which could be through organizing professional development workshops or symposiums.

• Challenges and opportunities of hosting webinars for a global audience highlighted issues around timing and engagement strategies

• Exploring future directions - included the identification of different topics of interest around context, policy and best practices that might be of interest to explore further.

• Expanding engagement and outreach while ensuring that the diversity of countries and environments are considered. The need to identify opportunities for research funding was noted.

• Publication opportunity – current special issue on Diversity, Inclusion and Entrepreneurship in the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research with an abstract deadline of 30th March 2025

Global WEP Webinar series February 2025

Posted by Beldina Owalla, February 2025 

Webinar series based on the published book collection on Women's entrepreneurship in a turbulent era (edited by Colette Henry, Joan Ballantine, Shumaila Yousafzais and Roshni Narendran) - click links below to access recordings

Webinar on Challenges and Resilience in Entrepreneurship

Webinar on Examining Societal Impact in Global Contexts

Relaunching Global WEP

Posted by Beldina Owalla, May 2024 

We hope this finds you well and are looking forward to the approaching summer break.

The transitioning of the leadership from Professor Colette Henry to myself (Dr Beldina Owalla) and Professor Tim Vorley as co-Chairs of GlobalWEP has been a busy time. We are excited about taking over the leadership of the Global WEP thought it would be useful to provide some brief updates, as we continue to finalise our plans over the coming months. We will also be hosting an online meet-up soon and welcome your ideas for new developments. 

OECD-GWEP Second report on Access to Finance -  many thanks to all of who submitted their country notes for this report. We have received a total of 30 country notes, which are currently undergoing an initial review by the OECD team. We will get in touch in case of further amendments. If no further delays are experienced, we hope to be in a position to publish the report by the end of the year.

Relaunch of GWEP website - as you can see we are in the process of updating the GWEP logo and website and will be in touch with more information and requests for content over the coming months!

New GWEP book  - We are also happy to announce that we are in the process of finalising a book contract with Edward Elgar for another GWEP edited collection on Gender, Diversity and Sustainability: An Enterprising Perspective. We look forward to receiving contributions from yourselves, your PhD students/Postdocs, and/or colleagues working in this or related areas. The submission deadline for an initial 250-500 word abstract is 1st September 2024.  See the attached Call for Chapters for further details. 

Publication updates:

We are putting the final touches to our GWEP book Women's entrepreneurship in a turbulent era (edited by Henry, Ballantine, Yousafzais & Narendran). The manuscript has been submitted to Edward Elgar Publishing and we expect the book to be published by the end of the year.

Our special issue on Entrepreneurship Policy & Gender in the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior and Research(edited by Henry, Ballantine, Dejardin, Krizkova & Neergaard) is due to be published by the end of 2024. All accepted papers are now available in Early Cite.

We would like to once again thank Colette and the Executive Team for the amazing work they have done! We look forward to drawing on their expertise and working in close collaboration with them and the rest of the network members, as we continue to grow and expand the network. 

We thank you for your inputs and patience!