Bangladesh has once again ranked at the bottom of a global survey of women entrepreneurs due mostly to the poor access to finance for female business owners.
The country has been ranked 57th out of 57 economies that were part of this year's annual survey of 'Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurs, falling behind conservative middle-eastern nations such as Saudi Arabia or Sub Saharan African states like Uganda or Malawi.
Last year, Bangladesh was ranked 54th out of 54 countries in the same index.
However, the percentage of women entrepreneurs, according to the Mastercard Index, is high in Bangladesh (25.9 per cent)-higher than countries like the United States (25.5 per cent), the United Kingdom (25.0 per cent), Germany (25.3 per cent), France (24.6 per cent), Italy (25.7 per cent) or India (11.0 per cent).
However, as the report noted, women's inclination towards business ownership in countries like Bangladesh is getting undermined "by limited access to education, financial and entrepreneurial opportunities".
Women in countries like Bangladesh are "driven to businesses out of necessity/need to survive", the index noted.
Mastercard has formulated its index based on three components, which include women's advancement outcomes, knowledge assets and financial access and supporting entrepreneurial conditions.
In the Women's Advancement Outcome component, which gauges women's progress as business leaders, professionals, entrepreneurs and labour force participants, Bangladesh has scored 24.3-better than only two countries in the index, namely Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
On the other hand, in the Knowledge Assets and Financial Access component, which measures matters like access to finance, tertiary education enrollment and support to SMEs, Bangladesh has notably taken the last spot as no other country fared worse in this category.
Again, in the Supporting Entrepreneurial Conditions component, which measures how supportive entrepreneurial conditions are for women, Bangladesh's score of 41.3 was better only than Iran.
This is the second time that Mastercard has carried out this women entrepreneurship index globally. The 57 countries chosen for the index represent 78.6 per cent of the world's female labour force.
Noting that Bangladesh's relatively high percentage of women entrepreneurship is not in line with its overall index score and ranking, the Mastercard report blamed it on acutely poor opportunities related to women's financial inclusion, business leadership and professional/technical positions, women tertiary education.
At the same time, poor supporting conditions for SMEs, quality of governance, and cultural perception of women entrepreneurs were also blamed for Bangladesh's poor score in the ranking.
