In Serbia, rural women boost their entrepreneurship skills and start their own businesses

Date: Friday, 1 July 2022

Despite the economic gloom, rural women in Serbia have found their niche and inspiration emerging under the European Union (EU)-UN Women funded Gender Equality Facility programme. 

Kragujevac Expo 1 - Twelve women entrepreneurs, who recently launched their businesses, got the chance to exhibit their products at an Expo organized in Kragujevac, Central Serbia as part of the EU-UN Women funded programme. Photo: UN Women. — Twelve women entrepreneurs, who recently launched their businesses, got the chance to exhibit their products at an Expo organized in Kragujevac, Central Serbia as part of the EU-UN Women funded programme. Photo: UN Women.

Twelve women entrepreneurs, who recently launched their businesses, got the chance to exhibit their products at an Expo organized in Kragujevac, Central Serbia as part of the EU-UN Women funded programme. Photo: UN Women.

For the first time, on 15 June at a women's entrepreneurship Expo organized in Kragujevac, central Serbia, Ivana Kruljevic presented her colorful wool products, including handbags, sweaters, flower brooches, clutches. "It's like a dream come true," said Kruljevic, proud of all her exhibit, and surrounded by many interested passers-by.

She has always been very fond of wool as a powerful natural material, which she believes does wonders. "All we need in today's world is connection with nature, and wool can help bring us closer to it through its various handicrafts," said Kruljevic.

Ivana Kruljevic, from Kragujevac, has always been fond of wool as a powerful natural material that she believes does wonders. Photo: UN Women.

Using her family’s sheep wool, Kruljevic started out making different items for her children and dreaming of turning this passion into a real business. Through the EU-UN Women funded Gender Equality Facility programme, she finally got a chance to attend numerous workshops. There she learned to develop her own business plan and got an embroidery machine, which she needed for making final touches to her wool creations. All of this resulted in getting an incentive from the National Employment Service in Serbia and registering her company, Vunita, in May 2022.

"My business is going to be two-fold: with workshops on wool processing on one hand and selling my products and making custom made orders on the other," said Kruljevic. She hopes that some galleries and tourist organizations will recognize her work and carry her products. In addition, she plans to sell the items she makes online. But, as it takes a long time to make just one item, she is still in the process of making different ones to be able to present everything once she launches her very own web shop.

Her fellow exhibitor at the Expo, Jelena Pavlovic, has a completely different offer dominated by ramsons- pesto made of ramsons and its tincture for healing but also different sorts of berry jams. Pavlovic spent most of her life in Greece and when returning to Serbia, she wanted to combine her passion for hiking with her future business. This is how she started bringing all the healthy herbs from the tops of mountains, such as blackberries, raspberries, rosehips, ramsons and the like, and making jam and other products.

Following various workshops, Jelena Pavlovic got a grant for the necessary equipment she needed to launch her own business. Photo: UN Women.

Through this project, she learned about entrepreneurship but also got a grant for the necessary equipment she needed to launch her own business. “But probably the biggest value of these workshops was building a network of supportive colleagues and friends we all now have,” added Pavlovic.

In Serbia, women make up only 30 percent of the total number of entrepreneurs. The survey indicates that there is a gender segregation in the sectoral orientation of the so-called "female" and "male" businesses. This does not come as a surprise given the various challenges that women entrepreneurs in Serbia face, including limited access to finance due to less property ownership, fewer opportunities for networking, poor access to services and information, lack of digital literacy, and double burden of household chores.

According to Snezana Milisavljevic, head of Putokaz, events like this are great opportunities for women entrepreneurs to show how creative, valuable, and innovative they are. Such events also allow them to get a sense of the market, see how people react, what their competition is doing, and whether they need to adjust some of their products and packaging in a certain way to ensure their future business growth. Milisavljevic also expressed her hopes that all women who start their own business will stay in that business and that by the end of the year they will be the lecturers and mentors encouraging and inspiring other women to follow in their footsteps.

The Expo, gathering women entrepreneurs from central Serbia, was organized by the UN Women partner organization Putokaz in Kragujevac as part of the EU-UN Women funded Gender Equality Facility programme, which aims to advance the economic empowerment, as well as entrepreneurship knowledge and skills of women and girls in Serbia. Since 2018, a total of 23 women's civil society organizations received grants within the programme for the implementation of projects on improving the position of women in the labor market, and promoting entrepreneurship and economic empowerment of rural women.