Issue Areas​

Although microfinance has provided millions of women with access to working capital, women-owned businesses are still lesser in number, smaller and slower growing than male-owned businesses. Similarly, digital financial solutions have reached men more effectively than they have women. Any development solution, both in its focus and in its design, must take into account issues of gender. We incorporate a gender perspective into all of our work and seek to identify opportunities toward greater gender equity.

 

Examples of our work:

• Created a diagnostic and set of recommendations addressing barriers to women's leadership roles at BancoSol in Bolivia. 

• Studied the role of women in leadership in 136 microfinance institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean financed by the IDB/ MIF and Calmeadow Foundation
  Designed a women's health insurance product in Guatemala for a leading bank's small savings clients.

• Accompanied FinEquity ALC in a USAID-funded project aimed at closing the gap between men and women in financial inclusion in ALC where it built and deepened the engagement of community practice of financial inclusion practitioners in Latin America and the Caribbean interested in closing the gender gap. The project included building Technical Guides comprising the use of data to identify women’s constraints, needs and behaviors; smart product design; and female leadership.  

• Supported Enabling Capital by working with a team of Columbia University graduate students to apply EA Tools in Uzbekistan and Cambodia with microfinance investees of EQ to identify gender leakages in human resource management and loan process management that led to women’s exclusion. Additionally, EA tested a sexual harassment training module online with EQ’s global staff prior to recommending it to be rolled out to investees.