Call to women to increase exports.

• Position: Export Opportunities

A need to encourage the growing number of women in small business into exporting has resulted in the relaunching of Austrade's Women in Export program.

It is hoped the program will channel the strong growth in the number of businesses operated by women towards export opportunities.

Tim Harcourt, Austrade's chief economist, says at present women are under-represented in exporter ranks. However, that is likely to change.

"According to Austrade research, most of the growth in the exporter community will come from small-to-medium-sized enterprises," Harcourt says. "This trend should see many of our new exporting business being those run by women entrepreneurs, or having female involvement in key positions in these companies."

Important force

Australian Bureau of Statistics figure show that women currently run one third of Australia's 1.6 million small businesses.

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