Spotlight on Women Entrepreneurs with Disabilities (SWED)
Building the data infrastructure to support women entrepreneurs with disabilities.
Women entrepreneurs with disabilities in Canada face compounded barriers
These barriers include fragmented support systems, limited access to capital, and a near-total absence of shared data that would help funders and service providers understand and respond to their experiences. Capital has flowed past this community not because the need is unclear, but because the information infrastructure to act on it does not yet exist.
Funders and service providers want to do better. Without the right information, they cannot.
The Spotlight on Women’s Entrepreneurs with Disabilities (SWED) project is a systemic change initiative to better understand the experiences of women with disabilities in the entrepreneurship ecosystem.
New Power Labs is partnering with Eviance on this project to address the data and information gap in the entrepreneurship sector and support the economic security and prosperity of women with disabilities.
As the process facilitator, New Power Labs is supporting the co-design and piloting of a shared data tool that will give small business program providers and funders the intersectional data they need to better support this community.
Project aims
Data on disability in entrepreneurship
Identify how the ecosystem currently captures and uses disability-related data.
Knowledge mobilization
Bring attention to the gap in knowledge and reporting on the experiences of women entrepreneurs with disabilities.
Supporting women with disabilities
Collaborate with ecosystem actors to better support women with disabilities in entrepreneurship.
New Power Labs is a mission-oriented nonprofit dedicated to expanding access to capital for underfunded and overlooked communities through research and collective action. New Power Labs collaborates with capital deployers across the full capital spectrum, from philanthropy to impact investing to venture capital and bank financing, leveraging research and data benchmarks to shift their policies and practices, and to catalyze system-wide change.
About us
Founded in 1995 by disabilities trailblazer Henry Enns, Eviance—formerly known as the Canadian Centre for Disability Studies—has been helping people with disabilities in Canada and their allies advance human rights through intersectional, community-based research committed to sustainable solutions rooted in action.
Acknowledgement
This project has been funded by Women and Gender Equality Canada.