"This report outlines the key characteristics, influencing environment and needs of women-owned businesses in order to support investors and technical assistance providers in Africa to adopt a gender lens within their current practices and policies. The paper summarizes the findings from primary field research conducted in three areas: technical and business support, financial support, and gender specific considerations. The report also includes considerations for investors and technical assistance or business service providers when adopting a gender lens with their current practices and policies within the three areas. "

"This document presents ENERGIA’s four-year journey to create and upscale womencentric energy enterprises that sell safe, reliable and affordable energy solutions to low-income consumers in underserved areas. ENERGIA works with partner organizations in seven countries in an effort to develop and test new, disruptive business models and approaches that promote women as energy entrepreneurs. This document is a self-reflection, undertaken collectively by the WEE programme coordinator, the partner organizations and the ENERGIA International Secretariat. As a learning document, it seeks to analyse the various strategies with which we have worked in different contexts. It draws out common features of the most promising ones, as well as lessons from efforts that did not go so well, or even failed completely. Since documentation on women’s energy entrepreneurship is only beginning to emerge, wherever relevant, we have crosschecked our lessons with those from women’s entrepreneurship in other sectors."

"This research is unique as it is one of few studies that looks at women entrepreneurs from a regional perspective, to assess similarities and differences in how women entrepreneurs are coping with financial and non-financial barriers to growth in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda respectively. The study also establishes how these women currently fund their businesses, explores attitudes to different types of financing to expand their enterprises and reveals the funding gaps and capacity building needs."

"Developed in partnership with ASEAN, this report discusses labour market participation of women and women’s entrepreneurship in the ASEAN region today. It takes stock of key challenges women are facing, analyses the policy landscape, identifies gaps, and proposes recommendations to advance the role of women in the labour market, as entrepreneurs and business owners, presenting best practice examples from both the region and the OECD."

"In the second of a two-part series focused on SAOs in Indonesia, this study by Angel Investment Network Indonesia (ANGIN) examines the performance, expectations, and challenges faced by SAOs, with particular reference to whether SAOs are meeting the expectations of entrepreneurs and investors and how gaps in expectation can be addressed.

This report also places a special focus on how SAOs support women entrepreneurs and the reasons for the gender gap in SAO activities. A multitude of factors discourage women entrepreneurs from applying and participating in SAO programs, from difficulty in finding SAO programs targeting sectors, location, or business stage, where a higher proportion of women entrepreneurs operate, through to a lack of women engaged in SAO programs as mentors, trainers, SAO staff or as participating entrepreneurs. The intensive time commitment during the program and competitive culture could also be contributing factors.

The report concludes with a practical framework that SAOs can use to advance their mission and recommendations to promote gender inclusion in the entrepreneurship ecosystem. Placing a greater emphasis on diversifying mentors, trainers and SAO staff, explicitly encouraging female candidates to apply and designing more flexible programs that allow women to balance SAO program participation with household responsibilities could encourage more women to apply."

"This SIGI Regional Report on Latin America and the Caribbean highlights the positive strides, commitments and momentum to challenge gender-based discrimination in social institutions, notably in land, property and financial rights, and in legal reforms to eliminate gender-based violence."

"Over the course of seven weeks, NESsT will email users a step-by-step process that organizations can use to develop a gender lens investing (GLI) strategy with their portfolio companies. The gender inclusive strategy specifically highlights metrics to drive gender equality and inclusion."

"Women play a key role in the economies of sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, sub-Saharan Africa is the only region where women make up the majority of those who are entrepreneurs. However, a range of impediments render women's businesses less productive and having fewer employees than those owned by men. This new report seeks to focus attention on the challenges that Africa's women entrepreneurs face and identify practical solutions. The report draws on new, high-quality, household and firm level data to present the clearest evidence to date about the barriers to growth and profitability faced by women entrepreneurs. The report offers policy makers evidence-based guidance on designing programs to target multiple obstacles and improve the performance of women entrepreneurs."

"Gender lens investing (GLI) - investing with the goal of making financial returns and a positive impact on women - is on the rise. Stories of new funds and promising investments are shared widely, signaling the growth of this trend. We wanted to know exactly how big the gender lens investing ecosystem is and how fast it is growing. So, in October of 2017 we researched and published Project Sage: a Landscape of Structured Private Equity, Venture Capital, and Private Debt Vehicles with a Gender Lens. Recently, we conducted a second landscape analysis, Project Sage 2.0, to assess the current state of the field and to understand how things had evolved over one year. This report presents the results of our survey and analysis of private equity, debt, and venture capital funds that operate with a gender lens. The landscape captures the field through July 2018, when our data collection for this report ended."

"Produced by Vital Voices Global Partnership in cooperation with IFC and the MENA Businesswomen’s Network, this report surveyed 431 women business owners across 8 economies in the Middle East and North Africa to understand their needs, the critical obstacles they face in accessing finance, and identify real solutions to increase the economic contributions of women-owned SMEs."