What are the conditions for a win-win scenario, where both businesses and women entrepreneurs benefit? This was the central question addressed during the March 28 seminar “Sourcing from Women: Meeting in the Missing Middle,” part of USAID’s ongoing Growing Economies Through Women’s Entrepreneurship series.

Women in most parts of the world struggle particularly to obtain a loan, access suitable savings products or even to simply open a bank account. Accessing capital is the challenge that continues to come up as a top priority across many of the programmes supporting women entrepreneurs. Statistically women have lower financial literacy rates than men. Interest rates on loans can be higher for women and financial institutions are often reluctant to give out loans to women, unless they have a male partner and high-value collateral. When women do receive loans, they tend to be at lower values.

This report presents general results obtained during the fourth survey encompassing the views and opinions of directors, managers and deputies of the SME division of 109 banks.

This paper seeks to identify and characterize financial products and services offered in Latin America and the Caribbean that support the inclusion of segments of the population that are not served by the regulated financial sector.

Recently, there have been numerous research studies by McKinsey, the Boston Consulting Group, the Kaufman Foundation, Dow Jones and the National Center for Women in Technology that have shown that gender diversity significantly increases profitability, productivity and return on investment.Nonetheless, over 90 percent of venture capital investments in the US go to all male teams! This is an almost unbelievable number because intuitively we know that diversity of any kind allows for better decision making and risk mitigation. Companies succeed when different perspectives are incorporated in their strategies.

Small and medium enterprises (SME) which are considered growth engines of our country, have seen some really difficult time over past year with the slowdown in economy and investment drying up. In a chat with Shereen Bhan, ICICI Bank, managing director Chanda Kochhar said that resilience factors for SMEs are smaller.

RAWBANK has established a programme intended for Small and Medium Enterprises in Democratic Republic of Congo in order to encourage enterprise and create a favourable business environment. 

« Lady’s First » is part of this approach for encouraging female enterprise. It is characterised by its aim to:

• Improve women entrepreneurs’ access to financial services,
• Improve women’s managerial skills through training,
• Facilitate women’s access to the market and to information.

We value gender equality as an integral part of EBRD's commitment to promoting sustainable and environmentally sound development across our investment and donor-funded activities. We therefore consider gender equality as crucial to promoting sound business management and advancing sustainable growth in the Bank's countries of operations.

N.K. Maini is the Deputy Managing Director of the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI). Recently, he spoke to Taslima Khan on what Small Industries Development Bank of India addresses (SIDBI) is doing to help small businesses in India.