The principal aim of the association is to bring together women
qualified to be called Heads of Business i.e. women who own or control a company whatever
its size. The crucial factor is that they have capital at risk and are financially
responsible for their business commitments.
BAWE provides excellent opportunities for networking amongst members,
promoting the exchange of experience and creating the conditions for like minded women to
do business with each other.
The roots of BAWE lie in the resourcefulness of women left with
businesses to run following the Second World War. Madame Yvonne Edmond Foinant, owner of a
steel factory, started an association in France in 1946 under the name of 'Femmes Chefs
d'Entreprises'. Similar groups of active women business owners organised themselves in
Belgium and Holland in 1949, and their presidents signed the statutes of the European
Association of Women Entrepreneurs in Brussels, on January 15th, 1950.
At the beginning of 1953, Madame Foinant entrusted Tinou Dutry, a young
Belgian member who had a London based business with the task of forming the association in
the United Kingdom. British business owners were invited to her Hyde Park Gate's offices
to be informed of the new organisation as a result of which Meiko Orr Ewing and Stella
Fisher joined her in Paris for the Congress of European FCE held in September 1953.
The three 'British' delegates were received with FCEM privileged
members at the Elysee Palace by M Vincent Auriol, then President of the French Republic, a
very prestigious debut!
To-day BAWE is the British affiliate of Les Femmes Chefs d'Entreprises
Mondials (FCEM), one of thirty affiliated countries from five continents. BAWE works
closely with the commercial section of all the embassies, particularly the world's largest
trading country, the United States of America and represents The World Association FCEM at
the United Nations in New York.
