Next week sees the First Women Awards (shortlist)  on June 23 within nine categories of Business Services (6), Finance(6), Media (5), Manufacturing (2 from BAE), Public Service (5), Retail & Consumer (6), Science & Technology (6 among them Dr Sian George, (right) head of commercial development, Acqamarine Power) Tourism & Leisure (3) and Property (4).

Aspiring Scottish entrepreneurs
Women entrepreneurs are helped by such local initiatives as the Geek Girls. When it comes to training, there is the invaluable additional input expertise of such charm schools as the Informatics Ventures leadership workshop. Itself led by a powerful triumverate of women in Laura Morse, (left) MD of Entrepreneurship Ventures Inc, Scottish born Fiona Murray (right), a family career development professor at MIT Sloan, and Glenda Burkhart, human resources expert (left) and MD of venture capital Golden Seeds that invests only in women led business start-ups, it teaches women can train themselves  better as entrepreneurs, and to be more ambitious (think 'Google' size - though pervasive nano is getting very powerful!)  And the workshop also had the valuable male view input of Kenneth Morse, founding MD of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center and (right) visiting Professor at ESADE Business School.

While the course manual is a magnificently useful reference, and the behaviour style profile that all delegates had to undertake, was an interesting mirror for personality style (controllers, analysts, persuaders and stabilisers) behaviour styles however can be changed if so desired), probably the most useful piece of literature was the Workshop Photo Book which actually has a photograph of almost everyone (bar a couple of last minute recruits) at the course.

For those whose visual memory is stronger for faces than names, this is a really wonderful device and one curiously rarely used in conferences and meetings, where getting a list of delegate names and their companies is usually the best that is available.

Ruminating over some of the enterprising women present, one to watch out for would be the Netherlands visitor Jackie Schooleman, CEO of Virtual Proteins BV  a low cost multi-disciplinary and user-friendly desktop virtual reality system, based on the VP MicroLab-concept this opens new ways in 3D imaging and medical simulations, enabling multi-disciplinary drug design and lead discovery, bringing new drug design and patenting opportunities faster, more cost-effective and more reliable.

Another, perched on the upcoming printing product revolution is Glasgow-based Amanda Whalen, director of Fab 3D  which teamed up with 3D design studio Dunedin Arts (offices Zurich and Edinburgh) and Glasgow's Core PD can actually offer a 3D object print facility (right sample) for physical models, in full colour, high quality, affordable and fast.

Sitting next to Ingrid Savill founder of Creative Waste Products revealed that her covetable colourful notebook, was one of her own range of stylish, eco-friendly stationery products.

It's also intriguing to discover that at least one workshop participant Hui McCulloch, with a neatly memorable calling card, had run several of her own businesses before and now was interested in developing something (antiques perhaps?) that would link her to Singapore. Just the place for entrepreneurs as Government investment there of US$700m should make it soon the first country to be enjoy with fibre optic infrastructure blanketing, and revenues of telecommunications operators there set to rise from $3.8bn in 2009 to $5.1bn by 2014.

Got any IP issues? Then go have a look at Imaginary Plane Ltd,  whose founder Elizabeth Vokurka has her PhD in particle physics and whose consultancy name is both a conveyance and a dimension!

Women still  miss out on a political dimension
It was interesting that recently the business price comparison service Make It Cheaper, has wanted to identify how connected female small business owners were to politics. The results are interesting if not completely surprising.

Apparently only 142 of our 650 MPs are women, representing an increase of just 2.5% in the number of women at Westminster. Britain lags behind other Western democracies in terms of the Cabinet's gender balance. Fewer than 20% of Cameron's ministers are women. But women make up 53% of Spain's cabinet, 50% of Sweden's, 38% of Germany's, 33% of France's and 31% of America's, according to the Centre for Women and Democracy.

The survey undertaken by an independent research company Redshift amongst 500 business owners in the UK shows that only 1% of women would ever consider standing as an MP, compared to 10% of men who willing to do so.

This could however have something to do with the fact that double the number of women than men named maintaining a good work/life balance as their biggest challenge (15% women, 7% men). However, an astonishing 45% of the women claimed they had no interest in politics (compared to only 14% of men asked the same question).

The difference in opinion between men and women doesn’t stop at politics. The research shows that the biggest challenges of running a small business also depends on your sex.  Men were more frustrated with dealing with banks (10% men, 2% women) and central government red tape (12%men, 2%women); but women were far more concerned with attracting and retaining customers (38% women, compared to 28% men). 

One can only hope that the growth of enterprising aspiring Scottish women, will hopefully eventually include strategic political ambition too.