EnterpriseWISE: making WISE women more enterprising?

This study explores the specific value of women only programmes for the enterprise education needs of women in science and engineering and technology (WISE) through reviewing the impact of EnterpriseWISE, a women-only programme providing entrepreneurial skills training for scientists and engineers. EnterpriseWISE was designed as a specific intervention to raise, in a single-sex environment, the entrepreneurial self-efficacy for a group of 24 participants. Its impact was evaluated using a survey-based instrument refined and tested by previous works. The results showed dramatic increases of self-efficacy for each individual. Programme level effects are only indicative due to the sample size but appear to indicate that EnterpriseWISE in part outperformed comparable mixed-sex programmes. The paper concludes that there may be value in funding and running women-only programmes in addition to co-educational programmes, especially in contexts where resources are limited or where there are cultural or institutional requirements to do so.