"Women-led and women-owned businesses continue to be a largely untapped resource for economic growth in emerging economies. There is promising data, highlighted in this report, for the opportunity to strengthen the entrepreneurial ecosystems supporting women in emerging economies, despite the negative impacts of the pandemic. This report underscores the potential for women’s businesses, especially startup businesses and high-growth entrepreneurs, and emphasizes the need to fill critical gaps in access to financing, technology, social networks and training. "

"In 2018, the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE), with the support of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), launched the Gender Lens Impact Measurement (GLIM) Fund to enhance the awareness, rigor, and quality of impact measurement for organizations supporting entrepreneurs with a gender lens approach. Each grant from the fund went to a partnership between small and growing business (SGB) support organizations in Latin America and researchers to use measurement for driving improved gender-inclusive strategies. This synthesis report summarises the tools and lessons from these grants on using measurement to increase gender inclusion for SGB support organizations."

"Women entrepreneurs are critical to a thriving and inclusive economy, and yet they face numerous challenges in growing their businesses. These challenges are compounded for women climate entrepreneurs (WCEs), given limited research that assesses the issues or presents actionable recommendations to the wider ecosystem. This knowledge product identifies challenges and opportunities for WCEs with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa - specifcally, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa and Malawi."

Business startup and growth is an important pathway to industry leadership and the
creation of personal wealth, as well as a key source of job creation, innovation and
economic growth. In this sense, women’s entrepreneurship can provide a means to
more rapidly advance gender equality in industries, communities and countries around
the world. The GEM 2020 Adult Population Survey ran from April through August
2020 and offered an important opportunity to examine pandemic impacts on women
entrepreneurs, in addition to an analysis of global trends. This year, we also invited GEM
researchers from around the world to contribute chapters on women’s entrepreneurship.
This year’s GEM Global Women’s Entrepreneurship Report has three main aims:
1. Identify key gender differences and similarities in business stages and
motivations. We identify countries and regions where gender gaps may be
significant and where they may be closing. All of these trends are considered across
countries, geographic regions and levels of national income.
2. Examine the structural and cultural factors that influence women’s
entrepreneurship. This analysis includes demographic characteristics (age,
education, household income), business characteristics and cultural factors,
such as cultural perceptions and high-growth activities that influence women’s
entrepreneurship in complex ways across regions, countries and levels of national
income.
3. Analyse how women entrepreneurs were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In doing this analysis of the pandemic’s impact, we allow comparisons across the
country and regional contexts, taking into account the level of income by country as
an important indicator of economic development.
Our findings offer insights to a diverse audience of researchers, policymakers, educators
and practitioners. Our ultimate goal is to highlight areas where there are still gaps,
challenges and opportunities, where women entrepreneurs have made significant
progress and where the COVID-19 pandemic impacted their business performance and
perceptions.

As investors with experience in gender lens investing (GLI), our peers often ask us for information on how to start their GLI journey. Many useful resources are available to do this. However, this brief addresses a gap in information on the tools and approaches used to design and implement gender-smart technical assistance for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to improve their social and financial performance. We also share our reflections from our collective experience to date.

Is there a gender gap in financing Africa’s early-stage ventures? And are there differences between female and male founders—such as the sectors they choose, or the ambitions they have—that could explain divergent funding paths? As start-up financing in Africa keeps climbing to new records, these questions are becoming more urgent. To find answers, we leveraged Briter Bridges’ leading industry platform to comb through years of deal flow data and surveyed a random sample of 172 entrepreneurs operating across the continent.

"This report was commissioned as a product of the working partnership between Root Capital and Value for Women, with the support of the Aspen Network for Development Entrepreneurs and the International Development Research Center. The main objective of this partnership is to build evidence around innovations for gender inclusion within small- and medium-sized agricultural enterprises globally."

"Now in its third year, the annual Mastercard Index of Women in Entrepreneurs (MIWE) continues to provide invaluable insights into the progress and achievemens of women in business. Despite many challenges, female entrepreneurs are opening successful businesses faster than ever before, and MIWE brings to the forefront the broad set of variables propelling this dynamism, globally."

"We initiated this study to identify demand-led macro unlocks that can drive growth for urban women (primarily the homepreneur segment), taking the lens of mass entrepreneurship. The intent was to present opportunities to ecosystem stakeholders, such that innovation, interventions, policies and business models can emerge that can lead to a conducive environment creating a path to bringing more women into the labour force in India."

"Syngenta Foundation India (SFI), established in 2005, is an independent not-for-profit organisation. SFI’s mission is to have small and marginal farmers participate in agriculture development by improving their access to better seeds and other inputs, technology, information, credit and market access. In this context, SFI launched its Agri-Entrepreneur (AE) Program in 2014. Under the program a rural youth is trained as an entrepreneur who provides last mile services to a group of 150-200 farmers. Currently there are 1763 AEs under the program who are supporting over 2, 00,000 farmers across India.

Of the total AEs, 265 are women AEs who are currently active across 5 project locations, i.e; Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. The objective of the study was to understand the performance of women AEs and create an enabling environment to improve income and increase participation. The study methodology is based on the integration of quantitative and qualitative research methods."