Members' Business - Gillian Martin MSP: Global Entrepreneurship Week

That the Parliament welcomes the return of Global Entrepreneurship Week, which will run from 13 to 17 November 2017; celebrates the work of Women’s Enterprise Scotland (WES) in promoting and supporting women into business during the awareness week and throughout the year; notes that as part of the 2016 awareness week, WES brought women business owners to the Parliament to receive training on giving evidence to committees, and that this work has been ongoing since; welcomes the refreshed Framework for Women’s Enterprise in Scotland; commends the contributions of women business owners and WES to the Cross Party Group on Women in Enterprise; notes the view that so-called gender-blind policy making, as evidenced by recent research by WES, must be replaced by a gender-aware approach to economic development, enterprise and growth policies; believes that the collection and analysis of gender-disaggregated data is critical to help policy makers meet the needs of women-led businesses, and understands that, if the rates of women-led businesses equalled those of men, the contribution to Scotland's gross value added (GVA) would increase from £7.6 billion to £13 billion, representing 5.4% in economic growth.