Women's Entrepreneurship Finance

On International Women's Day this year, Experian is reaffirming its commitment to female financial literacy and inclusion through a series of innovative social initiatives across Asia.

A growing body of research suggests that more female workforce participation in a country corresponds with higher GDP, as does greater gender equality overall. And a crucial element of this is boosting financial education and inclusion for women, widely seen as one of the most effective means of reducing poverty in emerging economies.

New technologies and business models are rapidly opening alternative pathways to economic growth in emerging markets, offering opportunities to reshape lives while improving economies. The sharing economy—especially the ride-hailing industry—is a notable part of this transformation and has the potential to better include and serve women. We are pleased to share with you a new report Driving Toward Equality: Women, Ride-Hailing, and the Sharing Economy, which explores how women and men participate in ride-hailing, particularly in emerging markets.

The 2018 Q1 MetLife & U.S. Chamber of Commerce Small Business Index rose to 66.3, up three points from Q4. A turnaround in confidence in the direction of the national economy contributed to the boost, making it the fourth consecutive quarterly rise and the largest increase on the Index record. This means 66.3% of small business owners have a positive outlook about their company and the small business environment in the United States.

Women-led businesses are an important vehicle for enhancing women’s economic opportunities and agency, and often lead to poverty reduction and economic growth.

Gender parity is fundamental to whether and how economies and societies thrive. Ensuring the full development and appropriate deployment of half of the world’s total talent pool has a vast bearing on the growth, competitiveness and future-readiness of economies and businesses worldwide. The Global Gender Gap Report benchmarks 144 countries on their progress towards gender parity across four thematic dimensions: Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment.

Houghton Estate, South Africa's Power 98.7 interviews IFC Country Manager Saleem Karimjee. Karimjee discusses IFC’s $62 million loan to South Africa's Mercantile Bank to support SMEs, with a strong focus on #women-owned and black-owned businesses. 

The report found that social enterprises are being used specifically to support women’s empowerment in Pakistan in three powerful ways, namely to:
• create economic empowerment for women through micro-entrepreneurship
• deliver training or employment opportunities for women
• provide affordable products and services for women

This is one of five companion reports that examine the role of social enterprise in women’s empowerment in each of the five surveyed countries (Brazil, India, Pakistan, the UK and USA). The British Council report aims to significantly enhance the knowledge of the role that social enterprise plays in empowering women and girls in India – notably by delivering training and creating jobs, by providing a source of funding for women's rights organisations, and by changing the power dynamic seen in other philanthropic models between the 'empowerer' and the 'empowered'.

Empowering all women and girls and achieving gender equality are not only moral imperatives, they are crucial to creating inclusive, open and prosperous societies. Yet the barriers to doing so by 2030, as targeted by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 5 are daunting.

The search for enhanced ways of addressing and funding this issue has inspired this British Council report, Activist to Entrepreneur: The Role of Social Enterprise in Supporting Women’s Empowerment in the UK.