Celebrating 40 Years of Women’s Empowerment in Business

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Women’s Chamber of Industry and Commerce (WCIC), we were pleased to join the WCIC in Ringing the Bell for women owned/ women led businesses at the Colombo Stock Exchange when trading commenced.

Despite high educational attainments, women’s economic participation in Sri Lanka is well below potential. According to the Department of Census and Statistics, female participation in the labour force was at 31.3% in 2023, significantly lower than that for men (68.6%).

Women-led and women focused enterprises often face unique challenges to establish and grow their businesses. As a result, women’s ownership of formal small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is low in Sri Lanka, and most women struggle to transition away from informal micro-scale businesses. Although SMEs contribute about 52% to Sri Lanka’s gross domestic product, according to World Bank Group data in 2021, only 25% of entrepreneurs in the SME sector are women.

Access to finance remains a critical barrier which needs to be addressed through targeted interventions to expand women’s access to capital, affordable financing and gender-lenses investments to ensure their effective integration into the formal economy.