cat/womens-entrepreneurship-finance
The Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi), the first World Bank-led facility to advance women’s entrepreneurship at this scale, will work to enable more than $1 billion of financing to improve access to capital, provide technical assistance, and invest in other projects and programs that support women and women-led SMEs in World Bank Group client countries. The announcement was made at the G20 leaders’ summit.
Women led businesses continue to suffer from underinvestment due, among other reasons, to gender discrimination, limited ability to attract investments (as a result of their smaller size and location in slow growing sectors of the economy) and insufficient financial services tailored to the needs of women entrepreneurs.
The W20 engagement group under the auspices of the G20 focuses on promoting gender inclusiveness and gender equality, essentially making a significant contribution towards a strong, sustainable and balanced growth trend globally.
This evaluation report highlights an exhaustive situation of what Nigerien businesses are going through in general and more particularly those grouped within "emerging women" in particular since the COVID-19 was declared in late March in Niger. It is a real question of survival that is played out for these companies confronted as highlighted by the report to a drop in production and sales linked to a problem of access to raw materials, packaging, and the layoff of technical workers.
El pasado 30 de abril, la Financial Alliance for Women, una red de organizaciones financieras dedicada a apoyarlas a desarrollar estrategias para aprovechar el poder de la economía femenina, llevó a cabo un seminario web, como parte de su serie semanal “Pregunta a un Experto: Negocios en Tiempo de Crisis” en el que participó, Banco Nacional de Costa Rica, primer miembro de la Alianza de la región l
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) account for 90% of all operational businesses, two thirds of employment worldwide, and half of world’s GDP. Despite their important role as the engine of growth, the enabling policy environment in many countries is not well suited to their growth and they very often lack access to financing to grow their businesses.
According to the G20, the global SME financing gap is significant. Over 200-245 million SMEs worldwide are in need of financing to invest, grow and create employment opportunities.
Mastercard launched a global effort to pay garment factory workers digitally, a pivot the industry is making from traditional cash payroll to ensure workers receive their hard-earned wages securely and consistently.
A study by Stanford University, Northwestern University, Dartmouth College and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology found investors are more likely to bet that a company will see its stock prices rise if it reported “higher-than-average” gender diversity among its staff.
Article via The Washington Informer.
The Indian School of Business (ISB) and Goldman Sachs on Monday announced the launch of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women Ambassadors Programme to help fuel the continued growth of India’s economy through the acceleration of women-owned businesses.
Article via The Tribune India.
Read more here.
Vietnam, an emerging market in Southeast Asia is making progress in addressing the issue of gender equality. An International Finance Corporation (IFC) 2017 report on ‘Women-owned enterprises in Vietnam: Perceptions and Potential,’ showed that 57 percent of women-owned businesses in Vietnam are microenterprises, 42 percent are small-medium enterprises (SMEs) and one percent are large enterprises. Vietnam’s central government is targeting to have one million enterprises by 2020, of which more than a third will be owned by women.
