08.07.2022 // How to run your own business while having a baby? How to organise everything so that there was enough time not only for work but also for the family? These are just some of the challenges faced by all women who have decided to start their own businesses. And in the Arctic, businesswomen have even more obstacles, so the potential of women's entrepreneurship in the AZRF is still barely used. A new community 'Women in Business. The Arctic' is meant to improve the situation.

On 7 July, a meeting of the Expert Council of the Project Office for Arctic Development (PORA) was held, which was attended by representatives of federal and regional authorities, experts and businessmen. The main outcome of the meeting was the decision to create a community for the development of women's entrepreneurship in the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation.

The concept of the business community 'Women in Business. The Arctic' was developed by PORA together with the ANO National Agency for Entrepreneurship Development.

'I am convinced that the subject of women's entrepreneurship in the Arctic zone deserves a special approach to development and promotion,' said Yulia Alferova, General Director of the ANO National Agency for Entrepreneurship Development and a member of the PORA Expert Council.

The new community will help women, both those who have already launched their own businesses and those who are just thinking about starting their own businesses. It will become part of an ecosystem of national entrepreneurship development agents.

According to experts, women entrepreneurs need additional measures of state support, especially in the first year after the birth of a child. Yulia Alferova believes that such measures should be guided by the opinion of the young mother herself. In addition, if women can create their own successful businesses, it will help solve the problem of population outflow from the Arctic regions.

'If a woman living in the Polar region is not provided with a job, she will not feel in demand, and eventually, she will start influencing her man, her husband, and saying that she should leave this place. And this bad practice will occur time after time. If we do not allow women to realise their potential, then we will lose people who could very successfully work in the Arctic,' says Alexander Vorotnikov, coordinator of the PORA Expert Council.