LORELY'S INTERNATIONAL LUMINARY AWARD FOR PROMOTING WOMEN IN BUSINESS

12.58.48pm BST (GMT +0100) Mon 15th Jun 2009

Last week I travelled to San Francisco (economy class) to pick up an International Luminary Award. This marked the culmination of work I have been doing to help women-owned businesses in the UK.

Two years ago I discovered that while women-owned businesses constitute only 14% of businesses in the UK, in America they have more than double that percentage. Translated into actual numbers, this would mean about 750,000 more women-owned businesses for Britain.

So I packed my shoulder pads and went to Dallas where the movement started to discover how they did it. The answer was legislation combined with a sort of 'dating agency' which put companies who wanted diversity in their supply chain with women owned businesses. The same thing exists for ethnic minority owned businesses.

Global companies like IBM, Cisco and Staples understand that it's good business to buy from companies who look like the people they supply to. They want to buy from women-owned businesses in the UK too.

So I helped set up a similar organisation in the UK. It's called WeConnect, connecting women-owned and run enterprises with companies who have a policy of supply diversity. We launched WeConnect last year, and although it grows from strength to strength, we are still a long, long way behind the USA.

To me, being able to use my position as an MP to help projects like this makes the job very worthwhile. I have made many friends and learned a great deal about the way Americans do business along the way. Sure they're pushy, but they put total focus into getting the outcome they want. There are no half measures, and they take no prisoners!

It's not a bad maxim for us to adopt. Some members of WBENC, the American equivalent of WeConnect, came over earlier this year. 'How's business?' I asked. 'Man, we're drinking from the fire hose!' said one woman. They decided they aren't participating in the recession: a mental approach that we would do well to adopt.