The WA4E project held a breakfast briefing on the 'Women Business Angels for Europe's Entrepreneurs' in the European Parliament on the 5th June.MEP Miapetra Kumpula-Natri (S&D, FI) opened the meeting discussing startups and women, there is a disruption in innovation happening in digital. She highlighted the need for education of women. Role models are there to encourage women to be more visible. Women business angels do need to have more visibility, and that is where the European Parliament can help.
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MEP Henna Virkkunen (EPP, FI) seconded Ms Kumpula-Natri’s arguments, adding that there is still a lot of work to do for equality especially in venture capital and for business angels. Marie-Elisabeth Rusling, CEO of Business Angels Europe and the lead on the WA4E project gave an overview of the aims of the project. She argued there needs to be a European-wide campaign to raise more awareness and there needs to be more harmonization, to achieve a single market for investors. Jenny Tooth, CEO of UKBAA, and the lead partner on the survey, presented the main results of the survey, analyzing the investing behaviours of women investors. She highlighted some of the findings of the survey, such as that financial reward is only the fourth motivation for women business angels. The survey instead shows that women business angels value the unique contact with entrepreneurs and keeping up with new trends and technologies. Claire Munck, CEO of Be Angels concluded the meeting with some tangible results in her Belgian business angels association, where the percentage of women business angels has drastically increased