Australian businesses run by women hit China barrier

Australian businesses run by women increasingly are turning to China to trade but are facing gender bias.

Australian businesses run by women increasingly are turning to China to trade but are facing growing barriers to expansion including gender bias and difficulty accessing finance.

The second five-yearly Austrade Women in Global Business report, undertaken by the University of Melbourne, says it is becoming more difficult for women to trade overseas, despite interest in free trade agreements and Australian products and services.

The report’s author, senior lecturer in strategy and international business Andre Sammartino, says several factors hinder women from expanding overseas and some of them are psychological.

The survey of more than 400 women has found only 38 per cent of Australian women who export are aged under 50, which may have to do with family commitments and the time women need to spend with their children.

“We ran a couple of focus groups and found women had a substantial career before children,” Sammartino says.

“When they wanted to return to work they didn’t want to work for other people.

“Some people wanted to extract themselves from corporate employment.

“Others felt they didn’t necessarily have a level of opportunity with their background … often there weren’t children in the home any more.

“I think it’s a mix of all these things that puts women off.”

It also may be that older women are more confident and are not put off by cultural differ­ences, and many younger women can be risk-averse.

Sammartino says 78 per cent of the women who export their products or services hold a bachelor degree or higher, showing they are well educated and most often bring a wealth of business experience with them.

Despite this, 55 per cent are having trouble accessing finance, he says, which is one of the most significant barriers to finding the capital to expand overseas.

“It’s a pretty consistent finding regarding women in business more generally and in other countries as well,” he says.

“Often there may not be an obvious surety that they can put in place. One of the findings is that a large number of these women had never asked for funding and some said they didn’t need to. There’s a danger in saying how much of a barrier this is to expansion, often with human capital it’s not what you need the money for.”

Sammartino says in the five years since the previous survey, trade with China has grown significantly and Asia has become a key market for companies owned by Australian women.

Of the women surveyed, 52 per cent ranked Asia as the No 1 region to trade with, and 34 per cent rated China as the most important country.

Going back five years, he says Australian women were likelier to export to the US, New Zealand or Britain.

With the global financial crisis over but still having ramifications, trading has shifted more to Asia.

“It’s very clear that Europe doesn’t seem to be on the radar,” Sammartino says. “It’s not surprising. It will be interesting to see if this was a bit of a blip with Europe or particularly to do with their ­crises and the euro, or whether it’s a trend.”

Other key findings include that 81 per cent of women are likely to export within five years of starting their company, 33 per cent received more than half of their revenue from exports, and 74 per cent want to expand to new markets.