Prime Highlights
- BRICS CCI WE unveils WISE whitepaper charting roadmap for women in business, STEM, innovation.
- Roadmap targets funding gaps, IP barriers, low STEM participation across BRICS economies.
Key Facts
- Ruby Sinha, HRH Lebogang Zulu push for women’s equity in entrepreneurship.
- Whitepaper proposes BRICS WISE Fund, Women Entrepreneurs Digital Registry for inclusion.
Background
BRICS CCI WE, the Women Empowerment Vertical of the BRICS Chamber of Commerce and Industry, has released a whitepaper titled “Women in Innovation, Science and Entrepreneurship (WISE): Challenges and Opportunities.”
The document lays out a roadmap for lifting female participation in science, technology, innovation and business across BRICS member economies.
Seven structural barriers hold women back in emerging economies, the whitepaper finds. These include social bias, funding gaps, weak intellectual property protection, low STEM enrolment, difficulty retaining mid-career professionals, policy shortfalls and unpaid work that goes uncounted in economic data.
Ruby Sinha, President of BRICS CCI WE and Programme Lead of WISE, argued that gender equality in STEM cannot stay limited to a small group of women. Global networks built as communities and economic ecosystems are what women now need, she said.
Sinha called on women leaders to shape an entrepreneurial ecosystem where more women reach leadership roles in new-age technologies, noting that innovation stays incomplete without women helping to define it.
Educational attainment among women has climbed, the whitepaper points out, yet women-led ventures still draw a smaller share of venture capital and struggle to secure intellectual property protection.
HRH Lebogang Zulu, National Chairperson of the BRICS Women’s Business Alliance South Africa and a Global Advisory Board Member of WISE, pushed for a change in language, from gender equality to female equity.
Systems, she argued, need to be built around what women actually require to take part fully in entrepreneurship and leadership.
The whitepaper’s proposed fixes include gender-responsive procurement, a BRICS WISE Fund, blended finance models, broader digital literacy access, structured paths back into careers and a Women Entrepreneurs Digital Registry.
