Women and Entrepreneurship

Synthesis of Questionnaire Evaluation
In the frame of the Grundtvig Partnership project

ROLE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN WOMEN’S LIFE

In the frame of our Grundtvig Partnership project we wanted to find out the actual situation related to the eight key competences included in the EU framework, in the three countries participating in the consortium.
For that we decided to make a survey to find out women’s approach towards these competences with a special emphasis on entrepreneurship.

The survey was based on a common questionnaire1 produced during the first project meeting by the three teams from Romania, France and Hungary.
The questionnaire was meant to put into evidence at what level the target group of women aged between 45-55 knows the information about the 8 European Key Competences.
The other aim was to find out which of these competences the target group is more familiar with and the last aim was to see if the women belonging to the target group are aware of the necessity of possessing these competences in order to be able to find a convenient job.
The questionnaire was translated into the three national languages (Ro, Fr, Hu).The outcome was analysed and summed up in national surveys.2
Our target group consisted of 90 women in each partner country, from which 60% were unemployed.
The questionnaire consisted of general questions about age, education, profession, work status, and specific questions regarding the eight key competences.
The first group of these questions concerned their general approach to the importance of the key competences for a successful professional career, the second group of questions asked about their preferences on what kind of competences they wanted the training courses to focus on.

The three teams noticed that certain slight variations are needed in the questionnaire due to some differences coming from historical or geographical characteristics. This is why there are national variations of the questionnaire leaving out or adding certain questions.
E.g. in France immigrant women may find difficulties in communicating in French, which is sometimes a big problem for finding a job. So it is a vital point in the French questionnaire, while in the Hungarian version it is left out.

We would like to mention that the questionnaires were carried out on a local scale in each country, so the findings are not country-representative.

The questionnaires were translated from English and used in the national languages in each country.

When making the common synthesis of the findings of the surveys carried out in the three countries we have to consider that there are two types of findings: one that is general and characteristic of the whole partnership, and the other type that reflects the national characteristics.

The first thing to be noticed is that the level of education does not necessarily influence the employed or unemployed status.
A possible explanation could be the fact that the highly-educated persons consider themselves over-qualified for some jobs and are more selective and demanding when it comes to choosing the proper job, and sometimes they prefer to remain voluntarily unemployed. Another explanation could be that sometimes the employers prefer less–educated people to pay them less money.

Communication in the mother tongue is a very complex competence. It refers to several skills, which were not defined in the questionnaire. This is why the answers are general. In Hungary and Romania nearly 100% of the respondents claimed to possess this skill, while in France 14% have difficulties.

The question related to Communication in a foreign language showed two aspects: the percentage of educated people who speak foreign languages is higher in all the three countries than the percentage of less educated people. On the other hand the persons who have very good knowledge of foreign languages can easier get a job.
In Hungary and Romania the percentage of people aware of the necessity of speaking a foreign language is significantly higher than in France.

Digital skills are considered very important both from the practical and the theoretical approach. At the same time the percentage of those possessing these skills in the employed group is higher.

Numeracy and competencies in math, science and technology are not considered key competences by the respondents, which is reflected in the answers. It means that they are not aware of the fact that they are key competences.

The competence of Learning to learn is considered important in all countries, e.g. 90% of the Romanians and 87 % of the Hungarians found it outstandingly important.

The denomination of some key competences may be ambiguous for people not familiar with these new European concepts. To avoid misinterpretations we preferred to introduce more specific questions related to them. This concerns interpersonal and civic competences and entrepreneurship. In these cases we introduced sub-competences such as problem solving, team working, risk taking, time-management etc.

The questions related to interpersonal and civic competences included communication in the workplace.
In Romania the employed possess better communication skills than the unemployed. In France and in Hungary the majority of the respondents don’t consider this skill important.
Teamwork and Problem solving are delicate issues in all the three countries. As the concepts are not very clear, the answers do not always seem relevant.

The following sub-competences of Entrepreneurship referred to learning new things, risk-taking, time-management, collecting and processing information, self-esteem, starting a business, ability to fulfill new activities.
As entrepreneurship competence was in the focus of our project and survey, we put special emphasis on analyzing the answers.

Learning new things shows the following picture:
In Romania 92.9% of the employed gave a positive answer in comparison to 90% of the unemployed. In Hungary 98% of all the respondents find this skill important. In France 100% are interested in “new activities”.
Risk-taking:
In Romania only 60% of the employed are not afraid, while 40% of the unemployed are not afraid of taking risks. In France 57% are not willing to take risks. In Hungary 60% of the respondents are not willing to take risks.

Time management skills:
In Romania only 50% of the unemployed think that they succeed in organizing their time correctly in comparison to 84% of the employed. In France most people think they can manage their time correctly. In Hungary about 70% think that time management has an important role in entrepreneurship.

The capacity of collecting and processing information:
In Romania 65% of the unemployed know how to collect and process information while 89,2% of the employed possess this skill. In France only 15% of the respondents are not capable of collecting and processing information. In Hungary only every second respondent thinks that this skill is vital for entrepreneurship.

In Romania the percentage of those able to fulfill more activities is quite close in both categories: 80% of the employed and 74,5% of the unemployed gave a positive answer. In France 7% think they are not able to fulfill more activities. In Hungary about 40% think it would be important to fulfill more activities.

As to self-esteem in Romania there is a big difference between the employed and unemployed people. 90% of the employed have a positive opinion about themselves, and only 60% of the unemployed do. In France only 15% do not have a positive image about themselves. In Hungary about 50% think that positive self-image is important for success in life.
The most important question was about how to start a business.
In Romania the percentage is low in both cases: 34% of the employed possess this know-how and only 10% of the unemployed. In France 15% are convinced not to be able to start a new business. In Hungary people lack the courage and more importantly the information on how to start a business (90%).

The remaining questions were meant to give us information about the respondents’ priorities and expectations, in order to be able to design and develop the workshop content.
As the project’s aim is to develop entrepreneurship skills, in this section we focused on the following topics:

a. How to use a computer
b. How to send e-mails
c. How to find information on the Internet
d. How to write official letters
d. How to find a job
f. How to write a CV or answer a job advertisement
g. How to know what you are good at
h. How to read and understand information fast
i. How to manage working with people and colleagues
j. How to manage personal things and coordinate tasks
k. How to behave and communicate at the work place
l. How to communicate in a foreign language
m. How to become more positive
n. How to start a business

By analysing the answers to these questions we had the following results:

In Romania the unemployed persons’ priorities are the following:
65% want to learn how to find a job
60% want to learn how to start a business
50% want to learn how to write a CV
35 % want to learn how to communicate in a foreign language .
The employed persons’ priorities:
§ 35% want to learn how to start a business
§ 35% want to learn how to become aware of their personal competences
§ 32% want to learn how to coordinate their own interests
§ 32% want to learn how to communicate in a foreign language.

In France the priorities are the following:
§ How to start a business
§ How to write a CV, job offers
§ How to access information
§ How to find a job
§ How to know yourself

In Hungary
How to write a CV, manage job offers
How to find a job
How to start a business
How to communicate in a foreign language
What am I good at

Considering the results of both sets of questions (one referring to priorities for success in life and the other one to the preferences for the workshop content) we can conclude that the following topics should be covered in an eight-hour workshop:

Knowing yourself (strength and weaknesses)
Management and teamwork
How to start a business (planning, organizing, analyzing etc.)

Although we had to adapt the questionnaires to the local characteristics of the three partner countries, while comparing the results, we realized that the priorities and expectations of the target groups are similar to a certain extent.
This is why we can produce a final common workshop plan for the training course to be organized in each country.
We originally assumed that the target group lack entrepreneurial skills and that they would need some informative training and materials regarding this European Key Competence.
As the outcome of the survey proved our initial hypothesis when proposing this project, we assume the workshops will be beneficial for the target group.



1 Annex 1accessible from the project website www.g2entrepreneurship.eu
2 Annexes 2, 3, 4 accessible from the project website www.g2entrepreneurship.eu