"This report, designed for international development organizations, governments, and financial institutions, does the following: 1) highlights the key barriers facing women-led small enterprises across the developing world; 2) identifies how hidden gender and ethnic biases impact the growth of women-led businesses; 3) presents the results of a pilot case study in Guatemala inspired by a novel methodology, first applied to mortgage lending in the United States, that seeks to test for bias in bank-lending decisions for small enterprises; and 4) provides recommendations for policymakers and financial institutions on how this methodology can be applied in developing countries."

"The study was set in rural markets in Kenya with the objective of testing how the GET Ahead programme affects the profitability, growth and survival of female-owned businesses, and to evaluate whether any gains in profitability come at the expense of other business owners. A year-and-a-half after the training had taken place, a mentoring intervention was randomly assigned among trained women to test whether additional group-based and in-person support strengthens the impacts of training on intended outcomes."

"This report sets out to evaluate the role that accelerators — organizations that provide capacity-building support to early-stage startups to help them scale their companies and attract investment — can play in addressing the gender financing gap. To determine this, we turned our attention to two primary questions, with a specific focus on startups in emerging markets: what is the gender financing gap pre- and post-acceleration, and what factors explain the gap? What strategies could accelerators employ to address the gender financing gap?"

"This report summarizes a more comprehensive assessment undertaken in 2017 which examined the characteristics of women-led, small and growing businesses (SGBs) in Mexico. Aimed at understanding Mexico's current entrepreneurial ecosystem and the financial and non-financial barriers facing female entrepreneurs, the assessment offered recommendations for how different actors can support women entrepreneurs. Available to a wide audience as a learning report, this summary assessment contributes valuable insights into how a broader set of actors implementing services and programmes for women entrepreneurs can improve their support to women in their entrepreneurship endeavours in Mexico and beyond."

"Fundera's quarterly report, The State of Online Small Business Lending, lets us put all the data we have covering small business eligibility and borrowing trends to good use. The more educated and aware entrepreneurs are, the better decisions they can make when it comes to financing their businesses-we really believe that.

This quarter, we decided to take a closer look at an incredibly important topic: women in the world of small business. When compared to their male counterparts, how eligible are female entrepreneurs for business financing? What sorts of loans do they get, for how much money, and at what rates? Are there substantive differences in categories like credit score, annual revenue, and industry? In short, do women entrepreneurs have a harder time financing their businesses?

Unsurprisingly, the results of our deep dive weren't too encouraging-but we're confident that alternative lending can be a platform for greater equality in the business financing industry. Transparency is just the first of many steps, but it's a vital one."

"We propose that using simulation experiments with random assignment of players to roles presents a useful way to test and expand organization theory and elucidate the interplay between micro-processes and macro phenomena. In this paper, we discuss the advantages of using these simulations to conduct organizational experiments at scale and illustrate the usefulness of these experiments by looking at theorized causes of entrepreneurial gender bias using The Startup Game, a role-playing simulation of capital raising in Silicon Valley. In this game, we randomly assigned 27,082 players in 259 organizations to founder and investor roles involving fictional companies. We thereby generated multiple "worlds" with different features, which enabled us to look at how player role assignment influenced organizational outcomes. We found that assigning identical startups to female (vs. male) founders systematically resulted in 11 percent lower valuations from investors. We looked at variation across game runs using data from multi-founder teams to understand why. We found that assigning one percent more female players to the investor role resulted in lowering the gender gap in startup funding by 272 percent. These results suggest that equalizing the investor pool potentially holds the key to reducing entrepreneurial gender bias. We discuss the implications of our findings for the value of using simulated experiences to design more equitable organizations and markets."

"This toolbox is the result of a collaborative process between Practical Action and the Institute of Socio-Economic Research of the Bolivian Catholic University "San Pablo" (IISEC-UCB). The complementarity of visions and action areas reflects in an innovative proposal that aims to respond to a frequent and growing need by non governmental organizations: to measure the impact of gender-focused actions promoted by development projects, in this case productive."

"Solar Sister, a social enterprise operating in Tanzania, Uganda, and Nigeria, is dedicated to eradicating energy poverty through the economic empowerment of women. In addition to economically empowering its women entrepreneurs, the business model of Solar Sister also cultivates sales networks built on trust in last-mile distribution methods. While Solar Sister has previously conducted research regarding its many entrepreneurs, it has lacked information on its end customers. In 2016 a research team from Santa Clara University’s Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship undertook survey research with Solar Sister to examine the effects of solar lantern use on users’ health, education, time allocation, household savings, income generation, and increased agency. The research team conducted a 53-question survey in more than 20 villages across five regions in Tanzania, with research assistants providing English-Swahili translation. The data and stories presented here are intended to help illuminate the potential of solar lanterns to improve livelihoods in rural Tanzania and beyond."

"The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) has provided a gender portal as part of their Navigating Impact Project. This portal collects specific strategies around measurement around various gender issues."

"This new guide provides corporations and their suppliers with a deeper understanding of the barriers and challenges preventing women-owned businesses from accessing and fully participating in local and global values chains. It provides the tools and techniques for reducing or eliminating these barriers and for leveraging the vast untapped economic potential represented by women-owned businesses. For many women, entrepreneurship offers a path to economic empowerment and it is incumbent upon corporations to help create conditions that permit this.

This guide is intended to support signatories of the Women's Empowerment Principles, which UN Women and UN Global Compact jointly promulgate, to take action on Principle 5: Implement enterprise development, supply chain and marketing practices that empower women. Corporations are well positioned to promote gender equality and empower women in their workplaces, in their communities and through their purchasing policies and practices."