Women's Entrepreneurship Finance

The program is the Women Entrepreneurs Opportunity Facility (WEOF), a joint initiative established by IFC and the Goldman Sachs Foundation. Its goal is to provide access to capital for 100,000 women, stimulating economic growth, and building stronger, more prosperous communities.

Although WEOF still has six years to run, to date, it has made over $990 million in investments in 26 financial intermediaries in 26 countries— far surpassing its original target of $600 million. It has also funded 10 advisory projects in nine countries with total project value of $4.3 million.

SME Finance Forum member Turkey’s Kredi Garanti Fonu (KGF), a credit guarantee institution, and the EBRD are joining forces to expand financing for small and medium-sized businesses led by women.

The partnership will enable the EBRD to unlock €300 million in new financing to support women’s entrepreneurship in a country where only 34 percent of women participate in the workforce.

Lloyd Blankfein is Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs. In this exclusive IFC Perspectives interview, he talks about the Goldman Sachs Foundation’s groundbreaking 10,000 Women initiative and the Women Entrepreneurs Opportunity Facility (WEOF), a first-of-its-kind partnership with IFC, to improve access to finance for SMEs owned or run by women.

Launched in 2014, WEOF has now raised almost $1 billion to support women entrepreneurs across the developing world, helping to transform thousands of lives.

Mastercard hosted two of the most influential women in microfinance, Andrea Jung, President & CEO of Grameen America, Inc. and Gina Harman, CEO of U.S. Network Accion, to talk about women's economic empowerment, the challenges female entrepreneurs face and more. 

Women, Business and the Law (WBL) is a World Bank Group project collecting unique data on the laws and regulations that restrict women's economic opportunities. Since 2009, WBL has enhanced the study of gender equality and informed discussions on improving women's prosperity. The dataset offers objective and measurable benchmarks for global progress toward gender equality. Comparable across economies, the data is useful for research and policy discussions on improving women's economic outcomes.

Ellevest, the digital investment startup founded by Wall Street veteran Sallie Krawcheck, is launching a new fund to invest in offerings that help advance women. Founded just over a year ago, New York-based Ellevest offers exchange-traded funds to help women save for retirement. The firm’s products account for different life variables, such as salary curves, longer life spans, and risk profiles. These distinctions help generate a better estimate of how much money clients will need in retirement, Krawcheck said.

A new episode of the ‘Pocket Economics’ podcast examines whether women are discriminated against when applying for loans.

Since the start of 2006, three venture capital firms—500 Startups, NEA and Golden Seeds—have closed more than 100 deals apiece backing female-founded companies in the US. Twenty-five investors have closed more than 50 deals each.

As a follow-up to PitchBook's recent content on women in VC, including their interactive map of investment in female-founded companies and articles on whether female founders get better results and closing the gender funding gap, they have highlighted the investors who have most actively funded companies with at least one woman founder.