Promising Practices LIFT Women’s Economic Potential
Susanne E. Jalbert, Ph.D.
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"Female entrepreneurs make significant contributions to economic growth and to poverty reduction around the world." -World Bank
"Entrepreneurship is an essential driver of societal health and wealth. It is also a formidable engine of economic growth." -Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2022/2023 Global Report
Donor-funded programming for empowering women has had failures and successes. It has deployed poor practices and best practices. In spite of programming, women remain restricted by discriminatory attitudes, cultural limitations, and patriarchal practices that inhibit their mobility, employment, career choices, and asset control. The LIFT approach is more than theoretical. LIFT embodies a promising practice with four principles to facilitate women’s goal to achieve economic potential:???
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Threaded throughout are “promising practices” drawn from a plethora of NGOs, governments, and private sector entities, revealing techniques that have consistently yielded positive economic results. These may be a good fit for Iraq and other evolving economies. The practices suggest possibilities for collaboration, training, mentoring, and onsite or virtual peer-to-peer exchanges.
LEVERAGE CHAMPIONS???
A critical mass of change is realized only through the sustained, collective action of those who design, execute, and live in the evolving environment (Jones et al 2004). Finding the “right champions” to achieve equitable inclusion for the kind of change essential to women’s economic progress will be crucial. Champions appear in multiple forms. They are action-oriented mentors, role models, and advocates for change. They can be found in business associations, schools (e.g., online SME academies, universities, technical and vocational schools), small companies, large corporations, or government programs (e.g., the women’s procurement program of the U.S. Small Business Administration or Small Business Program | Economic Growth and Trade | U.S. Agency for International Development ( usaid.gov ) .
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To preserve and expand gains requires cultivating champions of women’s economic equity as business owners, plus sharing practical techniques for women as entrepreneurs.?
PROMISING GLOBAL PRACTICES?
Public-Private Partnership. In Vietnam and Indonesia, a pilot project titled Women Entrepreneurs Amplifying Ventures and Economies ( WEAVE) was promoted by a four-way partnership: The Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, Qualcomm Wireless Reach, ASEAN-USAID Inclusive Growth and implemented by Nathan Associates.?
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Iraq Public-Private Partnership. To share regional expertise, Bassem Rahmi, CEO of Egypt’s MSME Development Agency met with Ali Mohsen Ismail Al-Alaq, Governor of the Central Bank of Iraq . The aim is to solidify links between small projects in both countries to include financing, technical support, and entrepreneurial knowledge transfer.
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Corporate. Combining corporate support and online learning, Hewlett Packard’s Learning Initiative for Entrepreneurs (HP LIFE) trains students, entrepreneurs, and small business owners to apply IT and business skills to start or expand. HP’s one-on-one training, tools, and e-learning programs improve entrepreneurs’ understanding of markets and strengthen their skills.
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Public-Private Partnership. The U.S. Department of State,?Goldman Sachs?10,000 Women,?and the Thunderbird School of Global Management have formed the Global Cohort program . The program combines mentoring, government support, and corporate sponsorship to provide business education to women in emerging markets.
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Academia. At Arizona State University through Thunderbird, Project DreamCatcher offers a program at no cost to Native American women entrepreneurs from the Hualapai, Tohono O'odham, San Carlos Apache, White Mountain Apache, and Navajo tribes. The Freeport-McMoRan Foundation originated Project DreamCatcher in partnership with Thunderbird for Good to build the capacity of women business owners from these five Arizona tribes.?
IMPACT INVESTING??
How uneven is the playing field for women when they try to access finance? The Boston Consulting Group found that women business owners (WBOs) deliver double the revenue per dollar invested .?Why then can women not get funded? Investing for impact requires creating and disseminating information on financial packages, improving financial literacy, opening capitalization channels, and expanding mobile banking. It also requires looking through a “gender lens ” to clarify what is necessary to build a bridge between traditional investors and women’s rights advocates,69 who seek parity across all sectors.??
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To accelerate financial inclusion across the globe Women's World Banking (WWB) developed a women-centered methodology . With over 40 financial services providers in emerging markets, they have deployed gender-intelligent solutions that really work for women. To detect p female customers, WWB principles at the center of the product design process are:? ? 1. Incorporate Behavior Design → Responds to Women Behaviors? 2. Design Thinking Methods → Challenges Conventional Thinking? 3. Bring in the?Gender Perspective →?Captures Changes Over Time? ?
Most finance products for women are empty symbols stopping access at an early stage. Lenders that supply credit in a range of sectors and to firms of all sizes must address the missing middle (meso) loan products for female business owners. Driven by heavy collateralization requirements for women-owned micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (WMSMEs), the application burden tends to be too cumbersome. WMSMEs perch on the precipice of untapped credit. Financial institutions, including micro lenders, can acquire better WMSME expertise and then enhance demand-driven competitive advantage in this underutilized space.
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To develop successful loan products for micro, meso and macro borrowers, lenders need to (1) understand market segments (retail, wholesale, agriculture, wholesale), (2) ascertain what motivates female business owners, (3) expand and discern specific loan products for WBOs, (4) recalibrate collateral requirements, (5) simplify applications, and (4) gauge what stimulates sector growth.
PROMISING GLOBAL PRACTICES?
Policy. The Bangladesh Women’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry successfully advocated national policy reforms that improved access to credit for women entrepreneurs. Thanks to these reforms, loans totaling more than $23 million benefitted 3,000 women entrepreneurs who were responsible to create 20,000 jobs.?
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Loan Products. Kenya Commercial Bank differentiated itself with two market approaches: assessing a company’s creditworthiness and training loan officers about the specific needs of WMSMEs. KCB went a step further to offer business club membership to SME clients, organize networking events, training classes and trade trips.?
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Agriculture Loan Products. International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) invests in rural people, empowering them to increase food security, improve the nutrition of families and increase incomes.
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Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-fi). The World Bank’s Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi) supports women entrepreneurs by scaling access to financial products and services, building capacity, expanding networks, offering mentors, and providing opportunities to link with domestic and global markets.??
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Refinance and Credit Guarantee Scheme for Women Entrepreneurs. State Bank of Pakistan , introduced a refinance cum credit guarantee scheme. Banks and development finance institutions now provide WBO financing at a mark-up rate of up to 5% per annum. Refinancing loans is backed by the State Bank of Pakistan at 0% for the participating financial institutions. Loans are eligible for 60% risk coverage under SBP’s Credit Guarantee Scheme for Small and Rural Enterprises.
FOCUS ON INNOVATORS AND EARLY ADOPTERS?
Innovators and early adopters are typically tech-industry labels. In the entrepreneurial ecosystem they are feeders to stimulate SMEs. Endowing them with early-stage technical support, either tech procurement and/or skills building, increases entrepreneurs’ success ratio.?
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A focus on innovators and early adopters who fashion unique enterprises can support four characteristics of structural transformation:??
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For women to gain critical mass as business owners, we need to understand the demographics of innovators and early adopters. Conditions for innovators and early adopters tend to confine women to micro and small firms. Change requires:?
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PROMISING GLOBAL PRACTICES?
Market Links. MarketPlace Handwork of India , founded by Pushpika Freitas, links product development, cooperative output, quality, and market access (Littrell et al 2010). The MarketPlace model is transferable, scalable, and suitable to insecure economic situations.
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Cooperatives. India’s Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), a cooperative nurturing women’s entrepreneurial spirit and providing microfinancing, was founded in 1972 by icon Ela Bhatt . SEWA offers entrepreneurial services for agriculture, handicrafts, vendors, and garment training as well as social services, self-reliance preparation, banking, health care, childcare, and housing.?AWAKE India is focused on SMEs to expand ISO 9001-2008 accreditation.
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Entrepreneur Hubs. DCEO/Tahfeez partners with provincial hubs to offer entrepreneurship support programs. Hubs assist individuals in various stages of the entrepreneurship cycle, from ideation to scaling the business. Hubs provide resources, training, mentorship, and funding to help entrepreneurs turn their thinking into successful ventures.
Government. Women Entrepreneurship Development System (WEDS) through the National Productivity Organization of the Government of Pakistan has developed WEDS to improve competitiveness of enterprising women who want to move from home-based business to a formal commercial venture.
TRANSFORM?
Measurable, scalable, and replicable activities with a multiplier effect can stimulate a rich entrepreneurship ecosystem. Iraq has an unprecedented opportunity to do things differently—to support diverse groups of women, educate men to champion women’s progress, collaborate with different national and international partners to create, offer, and apply competitive-edge best practices.
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Transformation requires synchronizing the seven principles of USAID’s Policy on Gender Equality and Female Empowerment with integration of gender, equality, inclusiveness, and building partnerships as well as engaging wide-ranging stakeholders, harnessing technology, addressing obstructions of insecurity, serving as a regional thought-leader, and holding WBOs and women’s business associations accountable through rigorous monitoring and evaluation (USAID 2012). Synchronized transformation is rooted in metrics that enable mining of trustworthy data.?
PROMISING GLOBAL PRACTICES?
Measurable. Gathering of sex-disaggregated data must be thorough and institutionalized to foster understanding of the conditions of women’s entrepreneurship. USAID’s Gender Lens Investing Activity recommends (1) data synthesis, (2) stakeholder mapping, and (3) field building.
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Sustainable. Developing a Caribbean example of development for small business development centers with attention on the need for start-up money, demand-driven services that generate revenue, focus on long-term assistance, and a results-oriented culture.
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Replicable. Outsourcing, such as does Freelancer.com , to encourage a marketplace that allows potential employers to post jobs that freelancers can then bid to complete. Founded in 2009, it is headquartered in Sydney with offices in Vancouver, London, Buenos Aires, Manila, and Jakarta. Sample services include website development, design, marketing, mobile apps, graphics, and data entry. In 2010 there were 2.8 million freelancers offering every product or service imaginable.
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LIFT?
WOMEN’S ENTREPRENEURSHIP: THE THEORY OF LIFT
Despite many efforts by civil society and international organizations to provide economic empowerment, there continues to be a significant need for technical business skills training for women who are interested in pursuing economic opportunities as MSMEs. On the Iraqi workforce level, only 2.3 percent of firms have women as top managers, compared to 4.9 percent in the MENA Region and 18.6 at the global level, indicating restrictions to women in holding top management and decision-making positions.
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Facilitate women’s goal to achieve their economic potential.:??IF public-private partnerships leverage the “right champions,” men and women,?invest for impact through progressive partnerships and financial products.?Focus on innovators and early adopters, THEN WMSME’s will exponentially transform, and so national economies will correspondingly grow.
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The promising practices highlighted above exhibit how targeted activities can be highly effective. A particular method, program, or intervention to support women-owned MSMEs can only be labeled “best” if it works in its intended environment and when it is measurable, effective, and replicable.
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To enable well-defined goals and indicators, the LIFT approach uses sex-disaggregated data, strong evaluation, and culled lessons learned. On overarching goals, LIFT results will be statistically transparent, intrinsically measurable, and progressively reportable.
Vision: "Improve the capacity of and boost women entrepenuers' development and networking through activities." -ASENA Women Entrepreneurs' Network (ASENA Secretariat 2012)
With all the global challenges to be faced, more than ever, it is time to improve economies. LIFT does not merely enable surviving obstacles, but it also produces the ability for women-owned/led businesses to gainfully thrive.
Author's BIO: Susanne E. Jalbert, Ph.D., Chief of Party
Susanne E. Jalbert, Ph.D. <[email protected] > is the Chief of Party of USAID Iraq Durable Communities and Economic Opportunities (aka DCEO/Tahfeez) implemented Chemonics International .? She is a committed gender equity advocate, economic development activist, and a women’s rights political strategist with over 25 years of experience on 85+ assignments with 35+ USAID implementers in about 50 countries on 4 continents.
For Chemonics International in Afghanistan 2018-2020, she served as the Chief of Party for USAID-Afghanistan’s Promote Women in Government program. Globally, the four task orders of Promote was USAID's largest-ever investment in women's empowerment. She also served as Chief of Party for the USAID-Moldova Anti-Trafficking Initiative and conducted ground-breaking research to counter human trafficking. In Iraq 2004 she served as Chief of Party for USAID Private Sector Development Initiative, and from 2006 to 2009 as Business Services Development Director for USAID-Iraq’s Izdihar and Tijara. Dr. Jalbert holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in adult education and human resources from Colorado State University and a B.A. in management from St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California.
For more information, contact:?Iraq DCEO Comms Team [email protected]. Also see LinkedIn: https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/susanne-e-jalbert-ph-d-b341b9/
Chief of Party at Iraq Durable Communities and Economic Opportunities - USAID
1 年Estefania McPhaul tagging you for visibility
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1 年Rick Breitenstein Samimullah Samimi Roselle Agner (She, Her) Sulaiman Raqeeb Humaira Saif Rachel Raccuia - please share with our colleagues working in this space who may not be active on LinkedIn.
Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Senior Advisor, Global Practice Lead at Chemonics International
1 年Congratulations on the work you’re doing with your team in Iraq and this insightful piece you just shared!!
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