S'pore's post-pandemic future rests on empowering women entrepreneurs

MODERN Singapore's business landscape is replete with incredibly successful women, many of whom have forged their own paths to success. Whether it's Grab co-founder Tan Hooi Ling, or the founder of Love Bonito, Rachel Lim, whose brand now has a retail presence that stretches across South-east Asia, there's no shortage of smart, driven women who took an idea and turned it into something big.

However, for every one of these success stories, there are countless women who are still struggling economically in the city-state.

2020 was, by any measure, a difficult year, and in many cases these difficulties were most acutely experienced by women. Even women in highly developed economies were vulnerable - in the latest Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurs (MIWE), Singapore slipped from a ranking of 12th in 2019, to 24th of the 58 countries surveyed in 2020.