The 2018 Federal Budget came out yesterday and being a financial literacy blog for female entrepreneurs, I couldn’t let today go by without posting about the Gender Based Budget and its emphasis on Women Entrepreneurs.

From the use of gender budgeting through Gender-based Analysis Plus (GBA+) – allocating limited resource based on a conscious effort to understand how those resource allocations will affect different people differently, to Introducing a new Gender Results Framework – a government tool to track how Canada is currently performing, to help define what is needed to achieve greater equality and to determine how progress will be measured going forward, it’s clear that the ladies were top of mind.

For this post I’m going to focus on following the money.

First some facts:

RBC Economics estimates that if men and women participated equally in the workforce, Canada’s GDP could be boosted by as much as 4 per cent, and could partially offset the expected effects of an aging population.

The gender wage gap is real – Women earned 31% less than men in annual earnings, and for hourly wages, Women earned 12% less than men

Women are still underrepresented in the Canadian economy, especially among small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs):

• Only 16% of SMEs are majority owned by women and they tend to –
  • Face poorer prospects
  • Be smaller
  • Be less likely to scale into larger companies
  • Be less likely to export (only 11% of Women owned SMEs)
• Only 13% of Canadian technology companies have at least one woman founder

Now, what’s in the budget for all you FinanciElles^TM:

The new Women Entrepreneurship Strategy – an all-inclusive effort to tear down the barriers to growth-oriented entrepreneurship that includes new direct funding from the regional development agencies targeted to women entrepreneurs, this direct funding includes:

• Business Development Bank of Canada’s (BDC) commitment to make $1.4 billion in financing available to women entrepreneurs
• $10 million over five years, starting in 2018-19, to expand the Trade Commissioner Service’s Business Women in International Trade program, to better connect businesses owned by women with international market opportunities
• $250 million available through Export Development Canada (EDC) to provide financing and insurance solutions to women-owned and women-led businesses that are exporting or looking to begin exporting

For the full details on the budget 2018’s Gender result Framework as it relates to equality, click here.

For the Full Budget Plan, click here.