WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS
Catalyzing Growth, Innovation, and Equality
Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions
March 2022

Citi is one of the world’s largest financial institutions, operating in all major established and emerging markets. Across these world markets, our employees conduct
an ongoing multi-disciplinary conversation – accessing information, analyzing data, developing insights, and formulating advice. As our premier thought leadershipproduct, Citi GPS is designed to help our readers navigate the global economy’s most demanding challenges and to anticipate future themes and trends in a fast-changing andinterconnected world. Citi GPS accesses the best elements of our global conversation and harvests the thought leadership of a wide range of senior professionals
across our firm. This is not a research report and does not constitute advice on investments or a solicitations to buy or sell any financial instruments.
For more information on Citi GPS, please visit our website at www.citi.com/citigps.

Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions

March 2022

Citi Contributors
Ying Qin, Ph.D.
Global Thematic Analyst
Citi Global Insights

Amy Thompson
Research Associate
Citi Global Insights+44 (20) 7986-8325 | ying.qin@citi.com+44 (20) 7986-3542 | amy1.thompson@citi.com

Ronit Ghose, CFA
Global Head of Banking, FinTech& Digital Assets,
Citi Global Insights

Ronak Shah
Analyst, Future of Finance
Citi Global insights+971 (4) 509 5286 | ronit.ghose@citi.com+91 (22) 4277 5126 |ronak.sharad.shah@citi.com

Kyla Gineitis
Senior VP
Citi Social FinanceSarah Courtney Dockett
Director, Head of Female Clients
Citi Private Bank, EMEA

+44 (20) 7508 8531 | kyla.gineitis@citi.com+44 (20) 7508 8947 |sarah.courtneydockett@citi.com

Madeline Seddon
Director
Citi Private Bank, EMEA
+44 7408 815063 |madeline.seddon@citi.com
External Contributors
Angeli Arora
Partner,
MishconSuzanne Biegel
Co-Founder,
GenderSmart

Henriette Kolb
Head of Gender andEconomic Inclusion,
IFC

Anushka Ratnayake
CEO,
myAgroMichelle Kennedy
CEO,
PeanutMarch 2022

Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions

WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS
Catalyzing Growth, Innovation, and Equality
Demonstrating and championing the economic case for gender equality in the
global workplace has been a consistent feature of the Citi GPS series over many
years. In this new report, we have turned our attention to advocating the businesscase for supporting women entrepreneurs to start and grow businesses. There isextensive literature on women entrepreneurship and the entrepreneur gender gap,
but attention on the topic has diminished during the COVID pandemic precisely at
the time when the challenges that women entrepreneurs face have intensified. As
the world seeks to build back from the pandemic, transition to a low carbon
economy, and achieve the potential of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, we
believe that building a gender-balanced playing field for entrepreneurs is critical.
Supporting women entrepreneurs and women-led businesses is not just the rightthing to do socially, it is one of the smartest things that governments, corporations,and the finance community could do economically.
In compiling this report we have sought to add value by blending the findings froman extensive literature review with a wide series of interviews not just with subject
matter experts but also with multiple women entrepreneurs. The report features
case studies and interviews which marry a data-led narrative with expert voices tobetter understand the lived experiences of women entrepreneurs across advanced
and developing economies. We take a global view, but the barriers that women
entrepreneurs face are particularly great in low- and middle-income countries andwe have devoted a large portion of the report to analyzing these issues. Current
literature also largely focuses on women starting businesses and less on supporting
the growth of their business. We have also tried to close some of this gap in our
narrative.
Today, women participate in entrepreneurship at 80% the rate of men, according to
Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). This marks a significant improvement overthe past 20 years: the equivalent report in 2001 found that women participated inentrepreneurship at roughly half the rate that men did across the countries includedin that year’s data set. However, while the pick-up in the simple participation rate is
welcome, it masks the fact that women still face many more challenges than men instarting and growing a business. Moreover, much of the growth in participation has
been in developing economies where women often start businesses with minimal
capital as solo-entrepreneurs in part because they find it even harder to accesssuitable employment in the formal economy. The International Labour Organization(ILO) estimates that, in 2021, women’s participation in employment was 63% that ofmen, meaningfully lower than the participation rate as entrepreneurs.
There is sadly no shortage of worrying statistics to demonstrate the barriers thatmany female entrepreneurs face. Lack of access to finance is one of the greatest
challenges that women entrepreneurs face around the world. The barrier is perhaps
best documented at the venture capital stage: global venture capital funding thatwent to women-led businesses reached 2.8% of all VC funding in 2019 (which wasshockingly an all-time high), and fell to 2.3% in 2020.1 On other statistics, womenowned micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) make up 23% of thetotal number of enterprises but account for 32% of the total MSME finance gap.

1 Ashley Bittner and Brigette Lau, “Women-Led Start-Ups Received Just 2.3% of VC

Funding in 2020,” Harvard Business Review, February 25, 2021.

© 2022 Citigroup3

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In our conversations with women entrepreneurs which have helped to shape thisreport, difficulty accessing credit was the most common theme. This is echoed in
the literature as a challenge that impacts many women entrepreneurs acrossdeveloped and emerging markets and across all stages of entrepreneurship, fromstart-up to established business and beyond. Access to finance is hindered bystereotyping which encourages the view that lending to women is riskier despite thebalance of data indicating that this is not the case. Indeed, we cite plenty ofevidence in this report that women-led businesses are more profitable than the
average of all businesses when they receive external funding. However, we arecareful not to cherry pick statistics and we draw out many nuances in this report.
For example, women entrepreneurs are overrepresented in the retail sector andgrossly underrepresented in the technology sector. Fully realizing the economic
potential of women entrepreneurs may require addressing the sectoral distributionof women-led businesses.
While critical in itself, access to finance is only part of the story, and simply
improving access to finance is no guarantee that the entrepreneurial gender gap willclose. Women’s entrepreneurial capacity is also materially under-leveraged. The
ILO, for example, estimates that 50% of women’s entrepreneurial potential isunderused, compared with just 22% of men’s.2 And, according to the World Bank,
104 out of 190 countries still have legal barriers to women's entrepreneurship.
Women entrepreneurs face a series of other barriers in accessing the full businessecosystem. These barriers come with different considerations in different countries,
especially in developing economies, but range across legal, cultural and practicallimitations on women’s participation in commerce; the difficulty of accessing national
and international markets; challenges in building personal networks, with links tomentors who can help navigate the business ecosystem; less access to educationand training, especially in business and digital skills; and disproportionate caring
and domestic responsibilities, especially among married women.
In aggregate, our analysis finds that closing the gender gap in business growth
globally could add over $2 trillion to GDP on a conservative estimate of thesubstitution effect in the labor market as we discuss in detail in this report. Our
analysis has used GEM, World Bank, and ILO data to estimate the potential growthdifferential between businesses led by men and those led by women. Some sources
argue for even greater pure economic gains in the range of $3 trillion to $5 trillion
while the influential 2019 Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship found thatgiving women entrepreneurs equal access to capital in the United Kingdom alone
could add £250 billion to the U.K. economy in total benefits. We recognize that there
are caveats to our findings and to those of others, but we believe that they give asense of what could be achieved by addressing the barriers that women
entrepreneurs face. Put simply, unlocking the potential of women entrepreneurs
would be worth trillions of dollars and hundreds of millions of jobs.
In addition to simple gains in economic growth and output, women’s economic
empowerment also drives much wider social and economic multiplier benefits
across families and communities. Women-owned or led businesses generally
employ more women employees, which can help drive a virtuous circle in further
boosting women’s economic empowerment. In addition, women tend to invest moreof their income than men in the health, education, and welfare of their families andcommunities.

2 International Labour Organization, Women at Work Trends, March 8, 2016.

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Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions

Women entrepreneurs can also play a decisive role in achieving the UN Sustainable
Development Goals more broadly. Empowering women entrepreneurs is itself an
exercise in development as they will create jobs, generate income, build humancapital, and drive growth while reducing inequalities leading to reductions in poverty
and hunger, and improving health and wellbeing. In addition, women are also an
underused source of knowledge, perspective, and innovation, and the businesses
they create can provide innovative solutions to global challenges. In one particularcase, reducing the environmental impacts of the agriculture and food sector is
critical to tackling climate change and biodiversity loss. Women play a significant
role in agriculture and the food value chain, but they are underrepresented inleadership and innovation. Currently, women hold 23% of agribusiness
management roles but only make up just over 5% of entrepreneurs in the sector
globally. Empowering women entrepreneurs in this sector could help to accelerate
climate and nature-based solutions in agriculture as well to build a more inclusive
sector.
Having surveyed the global entrepreneurial landscape, we set out a series ofrecommendations for legislators and also for both public and private capital to help
promote more gender-balanced outcomes. Financial institutions, including
microfinance initiatives, banks, venture capital and private equity firms, andinstitutional investors, will be key to unlocking the opportunities around women
entrepreneurs. We are here encouraged by two growing trends: the rapid transfer in
wealth to women and the rise of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) andgender lens investing. We discuss these trends throughout this report.
More and better data are still needed on women entrepreneurship, especially on theintersectionality with other forms of diversity such as ethnicity. This is in line with theneed for better gender data overall, as there is a distinct gender data gap and,shockingly, we still lack data for 60% of the indicators for gender equality across the
UN SDGs. Unlocking the potential of women’s entrepreneurship requires microlevel interventions alongside a dismantling of macro-level constraints. It also
requires concerted actions across the law, public policy and the private sector. Only
by partnerships can we put all our resources to productive use and achieve scalable
and sustainable impact.
I would particularly like to thank my colleagues Ying Qin and Amy Thompson for
their outstanding work in preparing this report and also all the experts with whom weconsulted as well as the amazing entrepreneurs who agreed to take part ininterviews with us. I hope that our readers find this report an important addition to
the literature on the potential of women’s entrepreneurship. Let’s all strive to act
upon the findings of this report.

Andrew Pitt
Global Head of Research
Citi Institutional Clients Group© 2022 Citigroup5

Unlocking the Potential of Women Entrepreneurs
GENDER GAPS IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Women engage in entrepreneurship at a lower rate than men (11% vs. 14%), and the gaps grow wider through each stage of entrepreneurship.
The International Labour Organization estimates that 50% of women’s entrepreneurial potential is underused, compared with 22% of men’s.
Women’s participation as a % of men’s
through the entrepreneurial process

Compared to their male counterparts,
women entrepreneurs are:90% 80% 73% 73% 60%

1.5x

more likely to besolo entrepreneurs

2-3xPerception of Intention
opportunities to start abusiness

Nascent
activity

Early-stage Establishedbusinessbusinessmore likely to becontributing family
workers in LICs

1.3x

more likely to start a retailor wholesale business in
low income countries (LICs)

Source: Global
Entrepreneurship Monitor,
UN Women, World Bank Group17%

more likely to cite
pandemic as cause
for business closure

Source: Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (2021)

BARRIERS TO WOMEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Women entrepreneurs face two types of barriers: (1) access to finance, and (2) full participation in public
life and the business ecosystem. These barriers appear at different stages of the entrepreneurial lifecycle.
Barriers to Women Entrepreneurship Across Stages of Business Development
Business Stage
Assessment

Start-up

Lack of access tofinancial services

Access to
Finance

Lack ofcollateral
Misperceptionof women-led
businesses as risky
Lack of womeninvestors
Restrictions onmobility
Lack of market
accessBusiness
Ecosystems

Smallnetworks
Lack of businessskillsLack of digitalskillsLack of careinfrastructure

Note: Fields in blue include barriers that are particularlypressing for women entrepreneurs in emerging economies
Source: Crunchbase, World Bank Group

GrowthMaturity

2.3%

of venture capital funding
went to women-led
businesses in 2020

30%

of women in EMs haveaccess to a bank accountvs. 40% of men

70%

of women-owned SMEs in
the formal sector in EMs
are underserved financially55%

of countries do not prohibit
gender discrimination inaccessing credit

10%of countries do not provide
equal ownership rights toimmovable property

Note: EMs = emerging markets; SMEs = small andmedium-sized enterprises.

WHAT OPPORTUNITIES COULD GENDER PARITY BRING?
Supporting women entrepreneurs (financially and non-financially) in growing their business isjust as important as supporting them in starting their business. Women entrepreneurs are key
to tackling global challenges, including catalyzing the post-COVID-19 recovery and addressing
the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Achieving gender parity in business growth could:• Increase global GDP by up to $1.6 - $2.3 trillion, or around 2-3% of global GDP• Generate $288 - $433 million jobs globally

The business case for supporting women entrepreneurs• Gender-smart and diverse supply chains build resilience and growth• Untapped business opportunities for financial institutions• Virtuous circle in women’s wealth creation and management• Opportunities to mainstream gender lens investing

KEY ACTIONS TO UNLOCK POTENTIAL
Unlocking the potential of women entrepreneurs requires purposeful action and collaboration
across all sectors. We recommend several key actions for financial institutions, governments, andthe private sector, including those below. IGOs and NGOs are key stakeholders and hold great
influencing power and reach from policymakers to individual women and their communities.
Financial Institutions

Governments

The Private Sector• Recognize thebusiness opportunityof women-owned
businesses• Improve policies
to end gender
discrimination• Adopt gender-smart
supply chains• Collect genderdisaggregated data

• Improve datacollection on women
entrepreneurs• Apply a genderlens to investment
instruments• Lead by example (e.g.,smart procurement
policies)• Support women
employees andinvest in talent• Invest in educating
girls and upskilling
women• Provide funding
and support (e.g.,business/digitalskills training)• Implement genderequality policies• Innovate gendersmart products
and services© 2022 Citigroup

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Contents
Executive Summary
The Global State of Women Entrepreneurship
Barriers Faced by Women Entrepreneurs
The Untapped Potential of Women Entrepreneurs
How to Unlock the Potential of Women Entrepreneurship

The Global State of Women Entrepreneurship

10
11
12
14
16

19

The Role of Women Entrepreneurs in the Global Economy
19
Participation in Entrepreneurship Varies by Region and Income Level 20
Women Entrepreneurs Run Smaller, Less Established Businesses 21
Women Entrepreneurs Are More Likely to Operate as “Solo-preneurs”22
The Demographics of Women Entrepreneurs Vary Across the World 23
Women Entrepreneurs Cite a Variety of Motivations for Starting a
Business
26
Women Entrepreneurs Cluster in Low Margin Sectors
28
Women Entrepreneurs Are at the Most Precarious Levels of theInformal Economy
29
The Gendered Impacts of the Pandemic Are Only Just Emerging
31

Barriers Facing Women Entrepreneurs

34

Women Entrepreneurs Face Significant Barriers Despite Recent
Progress
34
Women Entrepreneurs Struggle to Access Finance
37
Women Are Underserved by the Financial Services Sector
39
Women Entrepreneurs Lack Access to Collateral Against Which to
Borrow
42
Lenders and Investors Consider Women-Led Businesses a Risky
Investment
44
A Lack of Women Investors Restricts Access to Funding
49
Women Face Difficulties Participating in Public Life and Business
Ecosystems
56
Women Entrepreneurs Face Restricted Mobility at Legal, Cultural, andPractical Levels
56
An Interview with Angeli Arora
58
Women Lack Full Access to National and International Markets
60
Women Entrepreneurs Lack Access to Networks
61
Lack of Education in Business and Digital Skills Poses a Challenge for
Women
62
Women Entrepreneurs and the “Second Shift”
64
An Interview with Michelle Kennedy, Founder & CEO of Peanut
66
An Interview with Anushka Ratnayake, CEO of myAgro
68

Accessing the Untapped Potential of Women Entrepreneurs

71

Achieving Gender Parity in Business Growth Can Unlock Substantial
Global Growth
72
Women Entrepreneurs Are Key to Tackling Global Challenges
78
COVID-19 and Entrepreneurs in the Developing World: Supporting
Business Survival and Recovery
80
Women Entrepreneurs Can Play a Decisive Role in Achieving the UN
Sustainable Development Goals
81
The Strong Business Case for Enabling and Supporting Women
86
Entrepreneurs
Women-Owned Businesses Represent Untapped Business
Opportunities for Financial Institutions
88
Investment Ecosystems Need to Change to Better Support Women
Entrepreneurs
92© 2022 Citigroup

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9

Citi Private Bank: Women Entrepreneurship and the Role of WealthManagement
95
An Interview with Henriette Kolb, Head of Gender and Economic
Inclusion Group at IFC
100
An Interview with Suzanne Biegel, Co-Founder of GenderSmart andFounder of Catalyst at Large
104

Solutions to Unlock the Potential of Women Entrepreneurs
Solutions for Improving Access to Finance
Recommendations for Financial Institutions
Recommendations for Governments
Recommendations for the Private Sector

110
111
115
122
124

With special thanks to our Citi Colleagues who shared their knowledge and expertise:
Emily Turner (Head of Business Development, Institutional Client Group), Jorge Rubio (Head of Citi Social Finance),
Elena Ponds (Citi Social Finance), Dustin Ling (Global Public Sector Group, BCMA), Javette Hines (Resource
Management Organization), Mital Patel (Strategic FinTech Investment), Ana Duek (Citi Ventures), Jelena Zec (Citi
Ventures), Katya Chupryna (Strategic FinTech Investments), Zhijin Cai (Strategy FinTech Investments), Helen Krause(Citi Global Data Insights), and Amal Gomersall (Community Development, EMEA).

© 2022 Citigroup

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Executive Summary
It is now well understood that when women are given greater opportunity toparticipate in the labor force, economies grow and societies prosper. For example,
we argued in the second Citi GPS Women in the Economy report that reducing
gender inequalities in the workplace could add around 6% to GDP in advanced
economies over the course of one to two decades.3 However, the role of women
entrepreneurs more specifically has received less attention. We define
entrepreneurship to include anyone owning and operating a business including
taking on the risk and reward of that business. This encompasses a spectrum ofactivities — from nascent activity before a business starts trading to small andmedium-sized enterprise (SME) ownership. Women entrepreneurs around the world
already make substantial contributions to the global economy — generating income,creating jobs, driving growth — but their full potential remains stifled. Research
consistently shows that globally, women entrepreneurs lack access to resources
and face gender-related constraints that prevent them from achieving their fulleconomic potential. However, there is also growing evidence on the business,
economic, and social benefits of empowering women entrepreneurs. For example,
research shows that women-owned/led businesses can be more profitable thanthose owned/led by men when they have the same access to finance. The COVID19 pandemic has disproportionally impacted women entrepreneurs, especially inemerging economies where the barriers women entrepreneurs face are even moreacute. As countries around the world plan to “build back better” from the COVID-19
pandemic and resultant socio-economic shocks, the potential of women
entrepreneurship should not be underestimated and could play a decisive role in therecovery.
In this report, we seek to understand the state of entrepreneurial activity around theworld, identify key barriers facing women entrepreneurs and the reasons behind
them, assess the opportunities if the barriers were removed, and explore key
actions required to unlock the potential of women entrepreneurship. We carried out
an extensive review of the literature and found that, while existing datasets were
helpful, there remain significant data gaps. Moreover, data alone fails to capture thecomplexities of women entrepreneurship. Therefore, we have supplemented ourquantitative analysis to include conversations with women entrepreneurs to better
understand their lived experiences (which has proved to be truly eye opening), as
well as discussions with a wide range of Citi and external experts and market
participants. The report features case studies and interviews, which we hope helps
to marry the more high-level narrative with expert voices and what is happening “onthe ground.” We have tried to present a balanced discussion on advanced andemerging economies, but the additional complexities and more acute roadblocks
faced by women entrepreneurs in emerging markets has led to a natural tilt in theirdirection.
There is already extensive literature on women entrepreneurship and theentrepreneur gender gap but attention on the topic appears to have waned in thepast few years. We think now is the perfect time to reignite a focus on women
entrepreneurship and its potential. Current literature largely focuses on womenstarting businesses and less on the growth of their business. This is particularly true
in developing economies where women entrepreneurship is primarily viewed as apoverty alleviation tool.

3 In addition to Citi’s findings that pursuing gender equality within advanced economies

could lift GDP by 6%, other studies have suggested even larger gaps globally relative toa “business-as-usual” scenario (e.g., McKinsey, 2015).

© 2022 Citigroup

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Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions

We believe supporting women to grow their business is just as important and offers
significant opportunities. Our own analysis finds that achieving gender parity inbusiness growth could add around $2 trillion to the global economy, the equivalentof 2%-3% of global GDP. Additional social and economic benefits are likely as
women’s economic empowerment can have a multiplier effect across their families
and communities. Women-owned or led businesses generally also employ more
women employees, which can help drive a virtuous circle in further boosting
women’s economic empowerment.

The Global State of Women Entrepreneurship
Globally, fewer women than men are entrepreneurs running early stage businesses.
In the aggregate data, 11% of the world’s women are entrepreneurs compared with
14% of men.4 In other words, women participate in entrepreneurship at 80% therate that men do. Significant progress has been made over the last two decades —in 2002, just around 9% of the world’s women were entrepreneurs versus 14% ofmen, and entrepreneurship appears closer to parity than other metrics, especiallyemployment. For example, The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimatesthat women made up 38.5% of the workforce in 2020, down from 39.5% in 2000.5
However, we should not be too optimistic about the situation: women entrepreneurs
still face significant barriers and the pandemic is widely seen as having set progress
back. It is more essential than ever to examine the situation in which women
entrepreneurs find themselves and, more importantly, to show how they can be best
supported. Currently:
 Women engage in entrepreneurship at a lower rate than men and the gaps

grow even wider through the entrepreneurial process. Globally, women form
the intention to start a business at 80% the rate of men, but by the nascentactivity and early stage business level this has decreased to ~70%, and at theestablished business stage it is just 60%.6 This trend is visible across all regions
and income levels.
 There is in general a “missing middle” of SMEs in emerging economies —where the distribution of enterprises is skewed in favor of microenterprises andlarge companies — whereas, in high-income countries, the distribution is morebalanced. The situation is even worse for women-owned SMEs than it is for menowned businesses, with a gender gap existing across all income levels.
 Women entrepreneurs cluster in low margin, saturated sectors like retailand hospitality and are severely underrepresented in the Information &Communications Technology (ICT) and Business Services sectors.
However, this is impacted by issues beyond gender, e.g. income level andregion. For example, in low-income countries, entrepreneurs of all genders
appear locked out of the ICT sector which accounts for 1.6% of men’s businessactivity and 0.5% of women’s.

4 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Women’s Entrepreneurship 2020/21 Thriving

Through Crisis, November 2021.
5 “Labour Statistics on Women,” International Labour Organization, accessed February

28, 2022.
6 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Women’s Entrepreneurship 2020/21 Thriving
Through Crisis, November 2021.

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 Women entrepreneurs are overrepresented in the informal economy in low

and lower-middle-income countries, including as contributing family workers. The
role of women as contributing family workers should not be underestimated. For
example, in family business ownership the business may be formally owned by aman, but women’s work often sustains these businesses.
 Women entrepreneurs cite a variety of motivations for starting a businessbut there are gendered trends. For example, across all income levels, womenare more likely than men to cite scarcity of jobs as a motivating factor in theirentrepreneurship. In high-income countries, women are less likely to be
motivated by building wealth.

Barriers Faced by Women Entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurship is not an easy path for either women or men, but women
entrepreneurs around the world face gender-related barriers and constraints thatmake it even more difficult for them to succeed. It is not a level playing field and, infact, there remain legal constraints that hold women entrepreneurs back. A recent
World Bank study found that 104 out of 190 (55%) countries still have legal barriers
to women's entrepreneurship. We have grouped the barriers faced by women
entrepreneurs into two categories: (1) access to finance, and (2) full participation in
public life and the business ecosystem. As Figure 1 also shows, these barriers
impact different stages of business development. Some affect the perception ofbusiness opportunities, while others affect business growth. Barriers such as lack ofaccess to financial services and misperception of women-led businesses as risky
affect the whole lifecycle of the business. Many barriers are particularly pressing for
women entrepreneurs in emerging economies which we have highlighted in orange
below.
Figure 1. Barriers Facing Women in Access to Finance and Full Participation in Public Life and the Business Ecosystem

Source: Citi Global Insights© 2022 Citigroup

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Lack of access to finance is one of the biggest challenges, if not the biggest for
women entrepreneurs around the world. The barrier is perhaps best documented atthe venture capital stage where global venture capital (VC) funding that went towomen-led businesses reached 2.8% of all VC funding in 2019 (which was an alltime high), and fell to 2.3% in 2020.7 The lack of women VC investors is often
considered a key factor, with the a 2020 report from Women in VC arguing that toroute more funding to women-led businesses, the focus needs to shift upstream toconsider the diversity of investors..8
In emerging economies, potential women borrowers are often stuck at the firsthurdle as they struggle to access financial services at the bank account level. WorldBank Global Findex data shows that in low-income countries only 30% of women
have access to a bank account compared to 40% of men. We discuss thechallenges women entrepreneurs face in accessing finance, especially in emerging
economies, and how to address them with our colleague Kyla Gineitis of Citi Social
Finance on page 52. Looking at SME financing, the International FinanceCorporation (IFC) reported that up to 70% of women-owned SMEs in the formal
sector in emerging economies are unserved or underserved by financial
institutions.9
However, access to finance is only part of the story, and interventions are also
required to tackle the other constraints faced by women entrepreneurs that prevent
them from fully participating in public life and business ecosystems. A recent paper
from the Brookings Institute noted that while women are credit constrained, simply
improving access to finance without tackling additional barriers will have little
impact.10 The constraint of gender stereotyping and unconscious bias was acommon theme from our conversations with women entrepreneurs across bothdeveloped and emerging economies.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on entrepreneurs of all
genders. However, emerging reports show that women entrepreneurs were
especially impacted:– Women-led businesses were more likely to close and were closed for longer
period during the pandemic.
– Women-led businesses were more likely to close permanently as a result of
the pandemic.
– Women-led businesses saw greater revenue declines than those led by men.
However, the pandemic also brought a rare silver lining for women entrepreneurs:
the rapid transition to remote operations improved their adoption and use of digitaltechnologies. Women entrepreneurs told us there was much greater willingness tolook at digital tools coming out of the pandemic, and for some start-ups such as
myAgro (see page 68), it has helped the business scale in a leaner way.

7 Ashley Bittner and Brigette Lau, “Women-Led Start-Ups Received Just 2.3% of VC

Funding in 2020,” Harvard Business Review, February 25, 2021.
8 Women in VC, The Untapped Potential of Women-Led Funds, October 2020.
9 International Finance Corporation, Women-Owned SMEs: A Business Opportunity for

Financial Institutions, 2014.
10 Ana Revenga and Meaghan Dooley, “What Works for Women Microentrepreneurs?”

Brookings, September 16, 2020.

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Moreover, with digital adoption accelerating at the personal level as well as at thebusiness level, more girls and young women might pick up the skills and intereststhat would lead them to starting and running tech-enabled businesses.

The Untapped Potential of Women Entrepreneurs
Enabling and empowering women’s entrepreneurship could be one of the smartest
decision the international community makes to “build back better” after the COVID19 pandemic. Women’s entrepreneurship has the unrivalled ability to drive change
given the ripple effect it can have within a community as women tend to invest moreof their income than men in the health, education and welfare of their families andcommunities. The scale of the opportunity presented by equal participation in
entrepreneurship is immense: the ILO estimates 50% of women’s entrepreneurial
potential is underused, compared with just 22% of men’s.11
Data shows the gap between women’s and men’s participation gets bigger throughthe entrepreneurship pipeline, with similar trends across income groups andregions. Our literature review, supplemented with expert interviews, helped us
understand that not only is it important to support women entrepreneurs in starting
their business, it is equally important to help them grow their business. The latter
type of support (both financial and non-financial) is often missed in the literature andin practice. This led up to carry out original analysis asking the question — what
benefits could we unlock if we achieved gender parity in entrepreneurship andbusiness growth?
Our analysis found that achieving gender parity in business growth could
increase global GDP by up to around $2 trillion — the equivalent of 2% to 3%of global GDP — and generate between 288 million and 433 million jobs. This
demonstrates that promoting women entrepreneurship and supporting the growth ofwomen-owned businesses can lead to substantial global growth and job creation.
Additional economic benefits are also likely given the multiplier effect of women’s
economic empowerment. Studies have found that women-owned businesses
generally employ more women employees, which can lead to a virtuous circle inboosting women’s economic empowerment. The benefits of this would then transfer
onto their children, affording them more opportunities.
We should also not underestimate the potential of women entrepreneurs intackling global challenges such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Empowering women entrepreneurs is itself an exercise in development as they will
create jobs, generate income, build human capital, and drive growth while reducing
inequalities. This will lead to reductions in poverty and hunger and improvements
health and well-being. Second, women are also an untapped source of talent,
perspective, and innovation and the businesses they create can provide
innovative solutions to global challenges, including improving access to food, cleanwater and energy, and addressing climate change and biodiversity loss. However,
women remain underrepresented in leadership and innovation in these areas.
According to PwC, just 15% of climate venture funding went to startups with at least
one-female founder.12 Women also play a significant role in agriculture and the foodvalue chain — a key environmental challenge — but hold just 23% of agribusiness
management roles and only make up 5.4% of entrepreneurs in the sector globally.13

11 International Labour Organization, Women at Work Trends, March 8, 2016.
12 PwC, The State of Climate Tech 2020, The Next Frontier for Venture Capital,

September 2020.
13 Amanda B. Elam et al., Women’s Entrepreneurship Report 2018/2019, Smith College,

2019.

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Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions

If the world wants to drive social impact and solve global challenges, a smart firststep would be to address the gender gap in entrepreneurship.
There is a strong business case for enabling and supporting women entrepreneurs.
 Gender-smart and diverse supply chains build resilience, sustainability,and growth: The scale of the opportunity is huge; globally, one-third ofregistered SMEs are estimated to be owned by women, but less than 1% ofspending by large corporations and governments on suppliers is earned by
women-owned businesses.14 However, there is growing evidence that shows thatgender-responsive procurement practices have a positive impact on business;increasing supply options, strengthening access to markets, and increasing
profitability.
 Women-owned businesses represent untapped business opportunities forfinancial institutions: Women entrepreneurs are often overlooked andunderserved, even though research shows that when women can access thesame resources, the businesses they own and lead can be more profitable thanthose owned/led by men. Studies have found that for every $1 of investment
raised, women-owned start-ups generated $0.78 in revenue, compared to $0.31
from men-owned businesses.15 According to IFC, women-owned MSMEs (micro,
small, and medium-sized enterprises) make up 23% of the total number of formal
enterprises and have a finance gap of $1.5 trillion, which accounts for 32% of thetotal MSME finance gap.16
 A large proportion of future women wealth creators are likely to beentrepreneurs: Women’s wealth is growing, and evidence suggests women andmen differ in their investment approach. However, women remain largely
underserved by the wealth management community. Opportunities exist to createa virtuous circle in women’s wealth creation and management, and enable
women entrepreneurs to “pay it forward” Our colleagues in Citi Private Bank
discusses this immense opportunity on page 95.
 The rise of gender lens investing: Environmental, social, and governance(ESG) investing is growing, and investors are increasingly embracing the UN
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) where gender equality is both itself oneof the goals and critical to achieving other SDGs. While it does not strictly define
gender lend, gender-lends investing could include improving access to capital for
women entrepreneurs, and also investing in products and services that improve
the lives of women. We spoke to global expert Suzanne Biegel on this important
topic where she highlighted opportunities to integrate sustainable investing andgender lens investing (see page 104). She also highlighted the risks ofoverlooking women, which include missing out on innovation and potentially hugemarket opportunities.

14 Elizabeth A. Vazquez and Barbara Frankel, The Business Case for Global Supplier

Diversity and Inclusion: The Critical Contributions of Women and Other Underutilized
Suppliers to Corporate Value Chains, WEConnect International, 2017.
15 Katie Abouzahr et al, “Why Women-owned Startups Are a Better Bet,” BCG, June 6,
2018.
16 “MSME Finance Gap Database,” International Finance Corporation, last modified
October 2018.

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How to Unlock the Potential of Women Entrepreneurship
In order to unlock the potential of women entrepreneurship around the world, weneed to break down the multitude of barriers described above that impede women
entrepreneurs. This is no simple task, and it requires purposeful action andcollaboration across all sectors. Improving access to finance for women
entrepreneurs is critical and financial institutions — including microfinanceinstitutions, banks, venture capital, and private equity firms as well as institutional
investors — can all help to unlock the opportunities. Closing the knowledge gap
between women entrepreneurs and finance providers is key. One central action
should be improving the gender balance and diversity across the entire financial
services industry, which also extends to the retention and promotion of female
talent. This is not only the right thing to do but also makes good business sense. A
2019 IFC study found that private equity and venture capital funds with genderbalanced senior investment teams generated 10% to 20% higher returns comparedwith funds with a majority of men or women leaders.17
We think an important step for financial institutions is to recognize the business
opportunity of financing women-owned businesses and to understand thechallenges of unlocking this opportunity from inside traditional lending and investing
practices. Our colleagues from Citi Global Insights’ Future of Finance team provide
their expert insights on solutions to improving access to finance on 111 and discuss
the role of digital in driving progress. We are encouraged by the many“changemakers” we spoke to who are disrupting traditional structures andprocesses to improve women entrepreneurs’ access to finance, as well as womeninvestors’ access to the industry.
We summarize our key recommendations for financial institutions in the table below.

17 International Finance Corporation, Moving Towards Gender Balance in Private Equity

and Venture Capital, 2019.

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Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions

Figure 2. Key Recommendations for Financial Institutions

Note: Recommendations that are especially relevant for emerging markets are highlighted in red.
Source: Citi Global Insights

Improving access to finance must go hand-in-hand with additional measures thattackle barriers such as lack of access to markets, training, and networks, as well as
legal inequalities and social norms. Action and support are required across sectors
and we have put together a list of key recommendations for governments andbusinesses as outlined below.

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Figure 3. Key Recommendations for Government and Business

Source: Citi Global Insights

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and intergovernmental organizations(IGOs) are also key stakeholders and hold great influencing power and reach —from policymakers to individual women and their communities. They are importantpartners for governments and private sector actors in providing coordinated support
packages for women entrepreneurs across the areas of access to finance, markets,
training, and networking. We are encouraged to see a growing number ofinternational initiatives focusing on women entrepreneurs and breaking down thebarriers holding them back, including the 2X Challenge, Women Entrepreneurs
Finance Initiative (We-Fi), SheTrades and WEConnect International. The potentialof women entrepreneurship cannot be unlocked with a flick of a switch; it requires
micro-level interventions alongside a dismantling of macro-level constraints, andonly by partnerships can all our resources and expertise be put to productive use
and achieve scalable and sustainable impact.
As the world sets out to “build back better” after the COVID-19 pandemic, theinternational community should not forget about the power of women
entrepreneurship and its ability to drive more inclusive and sustainable growth anddevelopment. The business case is clear, the market opportunities are immense,
and the benefits are unparalleled, but women entrepreneurs around the world still
do not have the same access to resources as their male counterparts. As Henriette
Kolb (Head of Gender and Economic Inclusion Group at IFC) pointed out:
“The potential is there, and we are short-changing ourselves by not unlocking thecontribution that women could make.”
Is it not about time we gave women entrepreneurs the level playing field they
deserve, and unleash the full potential of women’s entrepreneurship and economic
empowerment?

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Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions

The Global State of Women
Entrepreneurship
The Role of Women Entrepreneurs in the Global Economy
Women are closer to parity in participation in
entrepreneurship than elsewhere, including
the salient comparison of employment

Women make up a significant proportion of entrepreneurs globally, but there are still
fewer women than men entrepreneurs running early stage businesses. Elevenpercent of the world’s women are entrepreneurs, according to Global
Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), compared with 14% of men.18 In other words,
women participate in entrepreneurship at 80% the rate that men do. While this isclearly not a situation of parity between men and women, entrepreneurship appears
much closer to parity than other gender metrics. A particularly salient comparison is
employment, where the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that in
2021, women’s participation in employment was 63% that of men.19
In this chapter, we dig beneath these headline figures to explore who these women
entrepreneurs are, what motivates their entrepreneurship, and what kinds ofbusinesses they run. In doing so, we face a significant data gap: many of the key
indicators around entrepreneurship are not published in a gender-disaggregatedform. This chapter represents our best efforts to piece together a picture of women
entrepreneurship around the world. A key dataset we use is from GEM, whichbegan as a joint research project between Babson College and the London
Business School in 1999 and now carries out over 200,000 interviews as part of its
Adult Population Survey each year. This dataset defines its key indicator, the Total
Early-Stage Entrepreneurial Activity rate, as the percentage of adults aged 18 to 64
who are either nascent entrepreneurs, i.e., actively involved in currently setting up abusiness they will either own or co-own, or owner-managers of a new business.20
We have supplemented this key dataset with data from other sources including theWorld Bank Group, the ILO, the United Nations (UN) as well as academic literature.
As there are limitations in the data, and we recognize women entrepreneurs are nota homogenous group, we have also spoken to a selection of women entrepreneurs
and experts around the world as part of our research process.
We define an “entrepreneur” as anyone involved in the ownership and operation ofa business, including the assumption of the risks and rewards of that business. Thisis, by design, a broad definition encompassing a whole range of activities. We see
this as a spectrum of entrepreneurship: at the initial stage of entrepreneurship arethose involved in what GEM calls “nascent activity” — entrepreneurs in the processof setting up a business that they will own or co-own but who have not yet taken asalary or any other payment from the business.

18 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Women’s Entrepreneurship 2020/21 Thriving

Through Crisis, November 2021.
19 International Labour Organization, Policy Brief: Building Forward Fairer: Women’s

Rights to Work and at Work at the Core of the COVID-19 Recovery,” July 2021.
20 Limitations on Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data include: (1) participating

countries change each year making it difficult to compare and examine trends; (2) whiledata is gender-disaggregated, it is impossible to examine other relevant demographic
features of women entrepreneurs for recent data sets; (3) the methodology andpublished metrics are still evolving, adding to the difficulties of drawing comparisons; (4)due to the cost of running the survey, very few low-income countries are included in thedata set.

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Beyond this are the owner-managers of new (existing for <3.5 years) or established(existing for >3.5 years) businesses. These definitions are inherited from the GEM
data set.21 We include small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as a separate
category within our spectrum, defined not by the years for which they have existed,
but by the number of employees or annual turnover.22 For these entities, we adopt
the most frequent upper limit of <250 employees.23 It is in this sense that we
discuss women’s ownership of SMEs, especially in reference to the SME financing
gap (as opposed to established businesses in the GEM sense).

Participation in Entrepreneurship Varies by Region andIncome Level
While the headline figures tell us that women participate in entrepreneurship at 80%
the rate of men, this is a global figure and there is significant variation acrossregions and between income groups. In Europe and North America, as well as highincome countries in general, there are far fewer entrepreneurs of any gender. The
gender gap is wider here too: in high-income countries, women’s engagement withentrepreneurship is 72% that of men, and in Europe and North America it is only
69%. (see Figure 4) This regional and income level variation points to theimportance of context in considering women’s experience of entrepreneurshiparound the world.24 Similarly, while one in three firms are owned by women, thisvaries widely — from 18% of firms reporting a woman among the principal owners
in South Asia to 50% in Latin America and the Caribbean.25

Total Early-Stage Entrepreneurship (%)

Figure 4. Women’s Participation in Entrepreneurship Varies by Region
35

25

Ratio of Women to Men Involved in Early-Stage
Entrepreneurship

30

80%

25
88%
20
15

Figure 5. …and by Income Level

83%
69%

10
5
0

Total Early Stage Entrepreneurship (%)

Significant regional variations in women’s
participation in entrepreneurship

20

Ratio of Women to Men Involved in Early-Stage
Entrepreneurship
86%

87%

15

72%

10

5

0
Central and East Europe andAsia
North America
Women (%)

Source: GEM 2020/21

Latin America Middle East andAfricaand Caribbean

Low income

Men (%)

Middle income
Women (%)

High income

Men (%)

Source: GEM 2020/21

21 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Women’s Entrepreneurship 2020/21 Thriving

Through Crisis, November 2021.
22 “Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) Glossary of Statistical Terms,” OECD,last updated December 2, 2005.
23 This differs from the figure in the U.S., where firms with fewer than 500 employees are
considered SMEs. See footnote 21.
24 We note, to this end, the academic literature tends to focus on women entrepreneurs
in individual countries.
25 “World Bank Gender Data,” World Bank, accessed February 28, 2022.

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21

Women Entrepreneurs Run Smaller, Less Established
Businesses
The gender gap broadens through theentrepreneurial pipeline

Expanding our viewpoint to entrepreneurial intentions and involvement inestablished businesses further complicates the picture. Women drop off at a quicker
rate through the entrepreneurial process compared with men. First, women perceive
opportunities to start a business in their local community at 90% the rate of men.
Then, while neither all men nor all women convert this into an intention to start abusiness, more men do than women. Women form the intention to start a businessat 80% the rate of men, by the nascent activity and early stage business stage, thishas decreased to ~70% and at the established business level, it is just 60% see
Figure 6).

Figure 6. The Participation Gap Between Women and Men Grows
Through the Stages of Entrepreneurship Across All Regions
GlobalEurope and North America
Middle East and Africa

Central and East Asia
Latin America and Caribbean

1.1

Ratio of Women to Men at Each
Entrepreneurial Stage

Ratio of Women to Men at Each
Entrepreneurial Stage

1.1

Figure 7. The Participation Gap Between Women and Men Gets Bigger
Through the Stages of Entrepreneurship Across All Income Levels

1.0
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6

GlobalHigh income

Middle income

Low income

1.0
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6

0.5

0.5
Opportunity
perceptions

Start-up
intentions

Nascent
activity

Source: GEM 2020/21
Region and income level play a significant
role in determining the experience ofentrepreneurship

Early-stage Establishedbusinessbusiness

Opportunity
perceptions

Start-up
intentions

Nascent
activity

Early-stage Establishedbusinessbusiness

Source: GEM 2020/21

The trends are similar across income groups and regions (see Figure 6 and Figure7). However, there are some notable differences.
 At all stages of business creation (i.e., excluding the perception of opportunities)

and across all income levels and regions, the ratio of women to men is always
less than one — in no grouping of countries do more women engage inentrepreneurial activity than men at any stage of the pipeline.
 In middle-income countries, the decline in women’s participation in establishedbusinesses is particularly notable — women in these countries may be better
able to start businesses, but growing their enterprises into establishedbusinesses presents more challenges.
 In high-income countries the decline after an entrepreneur forms an intention ismore moderate, but they are less likely to have perceived an opportunity in thefirst place — the challenge for women in high-income economies isperceiving opportunities to start a business.
 In Europe and North America and Central and East Asia, women are more

likely to engage in early-stage entrepreneurship (operating a tradingbusiness) than nascent activity (operating a business that does not yet pay asalary, wage, or other payments to the owner). This suggests that men may be
more motivated, or financially better able, to take the risks associated with
operating a business that does not yet pay a salary.

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Women Entrepreneurs Are More Likely to Operate as“Solo-preneurs”
Women entrepreneurs are less likely toemploy colleagues

Globally, women entrepreneurs are 1.5x more likely than their male counterparts tobe “solo-preneurs”, i.e., entrepreneurs working alone, without any employees. The
trend is similar across most regions and income levels, though in some places it isaugmented — women in low-income countries are almost twice as likely to operatea business alone.26
Women entrepreneurs are correspondingly less likely than men to operate abusiness with either 6-19 or 20+ employees. Globally, women entrepreneurs arehalf as likely as men to operate a business with 6-19 employees and the ratio
between women and men operating a business with 20+ employees is less than
0.3. Just 1.8% of women entrepreneurs at the global level operate a business with
20 or more employees compared with 6.1% of men.
Figure 8. Percentage of Entrepreneurs Reporting the Given Employment Rate, Split by Gender
(%)
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Solo-preneurs

1-5 employees
Women

6-19 employeesMen

20+ current
employees

Source: GEM 2020/21
There may be a “Missing Middle” of womenled SMEs

One phenomenon talked about in the literature is the “Missing Middle,” or lack of
SMEs, in developing countries. This term describes a distribution of enterprises inemerging markets which is skewed in favor of microenterprises and large
companies, with relatively few SMEs compared with developed market
counterparts. High-income countries have a more balanced distribution ofenterprises across the spectrum of sizes and, as a result, a higher number of jobcreating SMEs.27 Our analysis suggests further insights:
 There may be a parallel “Missing Middle” among women-led businesses inhigh-income countries: In high-income countries, women-led businesses areless evenly distributed across the employment rate categories than businesses
led by men.

26 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Women’s Entrepreneurship 2020/21 Thriving

Through Crisis, November 2021.
27 Meghana Ayyagari et al., Small and Medium Enterprises Across the Globe: A New

Database, World Bank, 2003.

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Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions

 The “Missing Middle” in lower-income countries may be more prevalent for

women-led businesses than those led by men: While there is a marked
decline in the percentage of men entrepreneurs in low- and middle-income
countries employing 6-19 or 20+ colleagues (compared with solo-entrepreneurs
and businesses employing 1-5 colleagues), significant gender gaps remain. For
example, in low-income countries, women report employing 6+ colleagues at justover half the rate of men.
There are very few outliers to the trend of women running smaller, less-establishedbusinesses. In Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data for 2020-21, only Angola hasmore women than men engaged in entrepreneurship at the established businesslevel. Similarly, Angolan women are as likely as Angolan men to operate a businesswith 20 or more employees. The problem here, and in many other low-income
countries, is that there are very few men or women in total running businesses ofthis scale in the country: just 0.5% of women and men entrepreneurs in Angola run
businesses with 20+ employees. This is indicative of the traditional “Missing Middle”
of SMEs.

The Demographics of Women Entrepreneurs Vary Acrossthe World
Women entrepreneurs earn less on averagethan their male counterparts

At the global level, women entrepreneurs are quite equally distributed across theincome spectrum: 37% have an income that puts them in the lowest third of earners
in their context, compared with 30% and 33% in the middle and top income buckets,
respectively. This diverges from the income distribution of men entrepreneurs, who
are more likely to fall into the higher income brackets. The distribution of men
entrepreneurs into three income brackets is 27%, 30%, and 43% from the lowest
bucket to the highest.
At the global level, the multiple of women to men entrepreneurs in the lowest thirdincome bracket is 1.3x. This is most prevalent in high-income countries, where theratio of women to men in the lowest third is 1.4x, and it is particularly pronounced in
Latin America and the Caribbean where women entrepreneurs are almost twice as
likely to fall into the lowest income bucket (see Figure 10). This reflects findings bysome academics that women-led businesses, when they do not have access to thesame resources including financing, markets, and networks, are less profitable thanbusinesses led by men, leading them to have a lower income.28 We provide
evidence below showing that in fact, businesses led by women are more profitable,
when they have access to the same resources.

28 For example, Lee Allison et al., Gender and Firm Performance around the World: The

Roles of Finance, Technology, and Labor, SSRN, January 12, 2021.

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24

Figure 9. Percentage of Women and Men Entrepreneurs Falling into theLower Third Income Bracket, by Income Level

March 2022

Figure 10. Percentage of Men and Women Entrepreneurs Falling into
the Lower Third Income Bracket, By Region

Middle East
and Africa

High income

Latin America
andCaribbean

Middle income
Europe andNorth America
Central andEast Asia

Low income

010% TEA Men

20

30

40

50

0

% TEA Men

% TEA Women

Source: GEM 2020/21
Data prohibits a full understanding of thedemographics of women entrepreneurs

10

20

30

40

50

% TEA Women

Source: GEM 2020/21

This is the only significant demographic difference between men and women
entrepreneurs at the global level, according to data from Global Entrepreneurship
Monitor. However, there are many other demographic questions that may affect awoman’s experience as an entrepreneur, including race, motherhood and caring
responsibilities, disability, and the socioeconomic standing of herself and herfamily.29 It is a limitation of many data sets that they do not collect this information.
While the age distribution of entrepreneurs is predominantly driven by income level
rather than gender, some have noticed that many older women are starting small
businesses after a period of absence from the workforce. This may be driven by thedecrease in caring responsibilities for older women and, if they struggle to re-enter
the workforce, entrepreneurship presents an opportunity.30 Elena Litani, a cofounder at Pillar Financial, found her calling later in life. She commented thatstarting a business after 40 has many benefits: you have more maturity, more life
experience, and more network relationships. In addition, Elena noted, “Women
often have more time to invest in their business or careers given that their kids areeither grown up or older.” Beyond this trend, across age and education, the income
level of an entrepreneur is far more significant than their gender: Entrepreneurs in low-income countries are on average younger than theirpeers in high-income countries — over 60% of entrepreneurs in low-income
countries are between 18 and 35. This may be a function of the lower medianage in low-income countries (18 versus 38 in high-income countries); however, alack of employment opportunities in these countries also offers an explanation.31

29 Income in the GEM data set refers to a woman entrepreneur’s current income, but itwould be interesting to know the income level of her family before she was anentrepreneur, to help answer questions around social mobility.
30 Ashley Powdar, “Why Many Older Women are Starting Small Businesses,” AARP.
January 31, 2022.
31 Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser, "Age Structure," Our World in Data, first published
September 2019.

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25

 Women entrepreneurs in lower-income countries are significantly more

likely to have only received some secondary education than their male peers— 30% of women entrepreneurs in these countries have received only somesecondary education, compared with less than a quarter of men entrepreneurs.
At the global level, women are fractionally less likely to have received a graduate
education, though this is closer to parity in high-income countries.
 In higher-income countries, entrepreneurship attracts far more men andwomen with a graduate education and the gaps between genders are
relatively small. This must be a function of the overall higher levels of education
found in higher-income countries.
Figure 12. Prevalence of Entrepreneurs with a Graduate Education, By
Income Level

50

12

45

% of Entrepreneurs Reporting a
Graduate Education% of Entrepreneurs Reporting a Given
Level of Educational Attainment

Figure 11. At the Global Level, Educational Backgrounds of Men and
Women Entrepreneurs Appear Similar

40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Some
secondaryeducation

Secondaryeducation% TEA Women

Source: GEM 2020/21

Post-secondary
education

Graduate
education

10
8
6
4
2
0
Low income% TEA Men

Middle income% TEA WomenHigh income% TEA Men

Source: GEM 2020/21

Considerations of the educational background of entrepreneurs cut both ways. As
we discuss in the second chapter, the type of businesses entrepreneurs start are
impacted by their educational background — in particular, certain sectors requireparticular skills which are often (though not always) gained through formal
education. If women are to “cross over” into male-dominated sectors, they may bebetter served if they have a higher level of education. However, it would be just as
concerning if all women entrepreneurs received a high level of education, since thismight indicate a barrier to entry hindering aspiring entrepreneurs who received lesseducation.

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March 2022

Women Entrepreneurs Cite a Variety of Motivations forStarting a Business
Across all regions and income levels, a high percentage of entrepreneurs cite thescarcity of jobs as a key motivating factor in starting their business — regardless ofgender. Moreover, conversations with organizations supporting entrepreneurs show
this is a particular problem in emerging economies, where many business owners,
especially solo-preneurs, prefer to be employed. However, there is also a modest
gender dimension: women are fractionally more likely to report starting a businessdue to a scarcity of jobs (see Figure 13). Global figures show 75% of women
entrepreneurs and 70% of men cite scarcity of jobs as a motivation forentrepreneurship; in low-income countries those figures are 84% for women and
79% for men.32
Figure 13. At All Income Levels, Women Are More Likely Than Men to Cite Scarcity of Jobs as a
Motivating Factor in Their Entrepreneurship% Citing Scarcity of Jobs as a Motivating Factor in
Their Entrepreneurial Activity
High income
Middle income
Low income
0

10

20

30
Men (%)

40

50

60

70

80

90

Women (%)

Source: GEM 2020/21
A lack of suitable, flexible jobs drives women
towards entrepreneurship

There are many potential drivers of this gender gap. One suggestion is that scarcity
of jobs means different things to men and women — women might consider ascarcity of suitable jobs, those that fit around their domestic and caring work, as
their motivating factor. Indeed, one study of Africa found that women were threetimes more likely to be responsible for domestic and caring work while operating
their business, and 50% more likely to be engaged in multiple activities during timespent running their business.33 One scholar describes this as the “multitasking
whirlpool” experienced by women entrepreneurs.34 Anecdotally, we heard from
Sophie Smith, Founder and CEO of Nabta Health that a motivating factor inbecoming an entrepreneur was to allow her to spend time with her children while
they were young — which she felt employment would not allow. It may be,
therefore, that it is a scarcity of suitable, flexible jobs that pushes women towards
entrepreneurship.

32 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Women’s Entrepreneurship 2020/21 Thriving

Through Crisis, November 2021.
33 World Bank, Profiting from Parity: Unlocking the Potential of Women’s Businesses inAfrica, 2019.
34 Irene Kamberidou, “’Distinguished’ Women Entrepreneurs in the Digital Economy andthe Multitasking Whirlpool,” Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 9, no. 3 (2020).

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There is another pattern among the motivations of women entrepreneurs — in highincome countries, women entrepreneurs are less likely than their male counterparts
to cite wealth building as a motivation. In-low-income countries, this is closer toparity (see Figure 14), suggesting that women in low-income countries see theirbusinesses as a poverty alleviation tool, just as they are often viewed bypolicymakers.

Percentage Citing Wealth Building as a
Motivation for Entrepreneurship

Figure 14. There Is Also a Bigger Gap in the Motivation of Building Wealth in High-Income
Countries

80

98%

Ratio of Women to Men
94%

70

88%
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Low income

Middle income
Women (%)

High income

Men (%)

Source: GEM 2020/21
Women entrepreneurs may build different
kinds of business — but we must beware of
the stereotyping implicit in this claim

This also echoes the often-cited finding that women-led businesses tend to focus
less on generating profits. This line of argument says that women are more likely tofocus on the benefit their business can provide to their community — the aim is notto generate return on investment or maximize profits but to have an impact on thecommunities in which they operate, including creating decent jobs for those who
rely on them to earn a living.35 However, according to data from Global
Entrepreneurship Monitor, men and women are equally as likely to report being
motivated to make a difference.36 Further, we should be cautious not to play into
stereotypes about the kind of businesses women lead. Sophie Smith, a woman
entrepreneur in the Middle East emphasized the dangers of this stereotype and its
power in stifling the growth of women entrepreneurs. Similarly, a report by the
Cherie Blair Foundation for Women found that 31% of women entrepreneurs in lowand middle-income countries experienced stereotypes that impacted theirperception of their own capabilities and limited their aspirations.37 Overall, income
level seems to have a greater impact than gender when assessing entrepreneurs’
motivations.

35 OECD, Closing the Gender Gap: Act Now, December 2012.
36 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Women’s Entrepreneurship 2020/21 Thriving

Through Crisis, November 2021.
37 Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, Gender Stereotypes and Their Impact on Women

Entrepreneurs, November 2021.

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Women Entrepreneurs Cluster in Low Margin Sectors
Women entrepreneurs are clustered into lower margin, saturated sectors like retailand hospitality, perhaps due to the lower barrier to entry in terms of capital andassets in these sectors. A World Bank study of self-employed jobs across 97
developing countries found that women are overrepresented in both retail andcommunity-oriented services. At the same time, they are correspondingly absent
from both construction and business-oriented services.38 Of course, not all selfemployment is entrepreneurship. However, we consider the sectoral distribution ofself-employment to be a good indicator of the sectoral distribution of women-led
businesses because it accords with independent analyses of the distribution of
women-led businesses.
Women-led businesses cluster into more
crowded, lower margin sectors like retail andwholesale

Data from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor echoes and extends the World Bank
findings, showing that while at the global level, men and women are bothsignificantly more likely to start a business in the retail and wholesale sector thanany other, women are even more likely than their male counterparts to enter this
sector (see Figure 15). This trend is particularly pronounced in low-income countries
where the ratio of women to men starting retail and wholesale businesses is 1.3x
(see Figure 16). Although all regions exhibit this trend, it is most noticeable in the
Middle East and Africa, which has the highest percentage of women entrepreneurs
operating in retail (>65%). This dynamic is intensified at the sub-sector level —emerging evidence from Ghana suggests that self-employed women operate inmore crowded markets.39

Figure 15. Retail is the Largest Sector for Entrepreneurs with More
Women than Men Engaged in it

Figure 16. The Gender Gap in this Dominance of Retail Businesses is
Particularly Acute in Low-income Countries

Gov't/Health/Education/Social
Svcs

Gov't/Health/Education/Social
Svcs

Fin/Prof/Adm/Consumer Sevcs

Fin/Prof/Adm/Consumer Sevcs

Wholesale/Retail

Wholesale/Retail

Manufacturing and Transport

Manufacturing and Transport

Agriculture and Mining

Agriculture and Mining% TEA Men

% TEA Men

ICT

ICT

% TEA Women020

Source: GEM 2020/21
Entrepreneurs in lower-income countries
struggle to access high margin sectors like
ICT regardless of gender40% TEA Women
0

60

20

40

60

80

Source: GEM 2020/21

Correspondingly, women entrepreneurs are noticeably absent from the information& Communication Technology (ICT) and Business Services sectors (e.g., Financial,
Professional and Administrative services), and this is consistent across all regions
and income levels. However, gender is not the only factor — the income level of thecountry an entrepreneur starts a business in is another strong determinant of thesector of their business. For example, in low-income countries, entrepreneurs of all
genders appear locked out of the ICT sector.
38 World Bank, Gender at Work: A Companion to the World Development Report on
Jobs, 2014.
39 World Bank, Profiting from Parity: Unlocking the Potential of Women’s Businesses inAfrica, 2019.

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However, a gender distinction imposes itself here too — the ICT sector accounts for
1.6% of men’s business activity and only 0.5% of women’s. In addition to capitaland asset requirements, this may be a function of the level and subject of education
required to start a business in these sectors, which is more prevalent among men inhigher-income countries. Stereotypes almost certainly have a role to play in thesehigher-income countries. Master et al. (2021) demonstrate that stereotypes aroundcomputer science and engineering persist among children and adolescents withpotential negative consequences for girls’ enduring educational participation, which
would be vital to bolster the pipeline of entrepreneurs, in these fields.40

Women Entrepreneurs Are at the Most Precarious Levelsof the Informal Economy
So far, the trends we have described have been applicable globally. However, it
merits considering the gendered experience of the “informal economy” in which
many entrepreneurs in lower-income countries operate. “Informality” describes a
range of situations. At the broadest level, it describes economic activity that is
hidden from public authorities and excluded from economic metrics like GDP.41
Many in the informal sector are excluded from social security and are not covered
by worker’s rights legislation, including minimum wage regulations.
As Figure 17 shows, the biggest determinant of informality is the income group of acountry.42 In advanced economies, informal employment accounts for 19% of GDP,
while in emerging markets and developing economies, it accounts for over 35%.43
In low-income countries, informal employment may be more than 90% of total
employment. Within this, women are fractionally more likely to be in informal
employment (see Figure 17). Moreover, more women than men are in informal
employment in 64% of countries, according to ILO data.

40 Allison Master, Andrew N. Meltzoff, and Sapna Cheryan, “Gender Stereotypes About

Interests Start Early and Cause Gender Disparities in Computer Science andEngineering,” PNAS 118, no. 48 (November 2021).
41 Ceyhun Elgin et al., Understanding Informality, CAMA Working Papers 2021-76,
Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The
Australian National University, 2021.
42 The International Labour Organizaiton data used here describes the total informal
economy, including both informal employees and entrepreneurs. We consider this asuitable proxy for the gendered experience of informality as an entrepreneur because
entrepreneurs make up the majority activity in the informal sector. See: p. 18 in ILO,
Women and Men in the Informal Economy: A Statistical Picture, 2018.
43 Ceyhun Elgin et al., Understanding Informality, CAMA Working Papers 2021-76,
Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The
Australian National University, 2021.

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Figure 17. In Lower-income Countries, Women are Fractionally More Likely to be in Informal
Employment than Men
100

(%)

Informal Employment Rate (Male)
Informal Employment Rate (Female)

80
60
40
20
0
Low income

Lower-middle incomeUpper-middle income

High income

Source: ILO
Women are often at the most precarious
levels of the informal economy

However, the figures behind informality do not tell the full story — not all informality
is equal. A 2012 report by Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing andOrganizing (WIEGO) describes how the highest concentration of women is found at
the bottom of a “hierarchy” in the informal economy — in precarious situations andlacking agency to make choices about the work they do, often as unpaid family
workers or homeworkers.44 The IMF adds to this statistical picture, noting thatwomen are more likely to be in the most precarious and lowest paying categories of
the informal economy.45
The lowest level in WIEGO’s taxonomy of the informal economy is “contributing
family workers” or “unpaid family workers,” where data shows there are many more
women than men.46 These terms describe self-employed workers in an enterprise
operated by someone else in their household. One example is family businessownership, where the business is formally owned by a man as the head of ahousehold, yet women’s labor is vital in its operation. Across all income groups,
women are more likely to find themselves in this kind of work and in lower-income
countries, they are 2-3x more likely to be contributing account workers than men(see Figure 18).

44 Martha Alter Chen, The Informal Economy: Definitions, Theories and Policies, Womenin Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing, August 2012.
45 Corinne Deléchat and Leandro Medina, “What Is the Informal Economy?” International

Monetary Fund, Winter 2020.
46 Martha Alter Chen, The Informal Economy: Definitions, Theories and Policies, Womenin Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing, August 2012.

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31

Figure 18. Women Are Far More Likely to Be Contributing Family Workers in All Income Groups

50%

Male

Female

40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Low income

Lower-middle
incomeUpper-middle
incomeHigh income

Source: World Bank
Women’s labor challenges traditional
accounts of entrepreneurship

Contributing family workers are not formally employed. They are tied to a businessin a similar way to its owner, and are often fundamental to its operation. As such,they may be considered entrepreneurs. While it is difficult to measure the economic
contribution of these women, the importance of their labor should not be
underestimated. Figure 19 uses coffee production as an example and shows thatwhile the “entrepreneur” is a man, women’s work sustains these businesses and isvital to the survival and success of these enterprises.
Figure 19. Who Is Responsible For Each of the Following Roles in Coffee Production?
100%

Men

Women

80%

60%

40%

20%

0%
Cultivating
coffeebushesPickingcoffeeSortingcoffee athome

Sorting Taking it to Taking it to Collecting Who owns
coffee at the factory the market the money the coffee?
the factoryforfrom coffee
processing
bean sales

Source: Mary Johnstone-Louis, International Women’s Coffee Alliance, 2013

The Gendered Impacts of the Pandemic Are Only Just
Emerging
Emerging data presents a conflicting pictureof how women entrepreneurs experienced
the pandemic© 2022 Citigroup

The impact of the pandemic is yet to be fully revealed, but initial indications are
emerging. First, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) gender report notes
the position of women entrepreneurs in 2020-21 was similar to that in 2018-19,
indicating that the pandemic may not have set back progress towards parity in therate of entrepreneurship. The rate of women entrepreneurship globally in 2018-19
was 10.2% and by 2020-21, this had fractionally increased to 11%. Over the sametime period, men’s participation remained fixed. GEM cautions against overinterpreting small fluctuations such as this due to their sampling methodology, andthey describe the 2020-21 figures as broadly consistent with the earlier time series.

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We agree that we should not be too quick to draw a positive conclusion. While theaggregate data indicates the pandemic had limited impact on women
entrepreneurship, individual women-led businesses faced significant challenges.
First, the pandemic caused more women-led businesses to close. World BankEnterprise Survey data shows that in 11 of 18 countries surveyed, women-led
enterprises had a shorter survival time.47 GEM data similarly suggests that while
women were fractionally less likely to discontinue their business in 2020-21 at the
global level (4% vs. 4.3% for men), those who did were more likely to cite thepandemic as a cause (42% vs. 36% for men). Women were also more likely to say
the pandemic made it harder to start a new business (66% of women vs. 61% ofmen). These data points are consistent with other findings in the literature showing
the pandemic had a significant impact on women entrepreneurs: One study of low- and middle-income countries found that almost four in ten

women reported that their businesses either may or would have to close
due to the pandemic.48
 In higher-income countries, a study of Europe found that 11% of women

entrepreneurs were unable to continue operating their business due to thepandemic with 79% reporting negative impacts due to the economic crisis.49
 According to a study of 40,000 mainly formal businesses across 49 countries,

women-led businesses in the hospitality sector, women-led
microenterprises, and women-led businesses in countries more severely
affected by the COVID-19 pandemic were disproportionately impacted by
the pandemic compared with men-led businesses.
Figure 20. Women Were More Likely to Discontinue Their Business for Reasons Connected to
the Pandemic in Middle- and High-Income Countries
50

Women (%)

Men (%)

40
30
20
10
0
Low income

Middle income

High income

Source: GEM 2020/21

47 Carmen de Paz Nieves, Isis Gaddis, and Miriam Muller, Gender and COVID-19: What

Have We Learnt, One Year Later? World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 9709,
2021.
48 Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, Women Entrepreneurs: Surviving the Pandemic
and Beyond, March 2021.
49 Luca Koltai and Réka Geambasu, COVID-19 and Female Entrepreneurs Throughout
Europe, HÉTFA Research Institute, September 2020.

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The pandemic brought specific, gendered
impacts

There are some regional distinctions. It merits calling attention to the link between
the sectoral distribution of women-led businesses and the regions that fared best inover the course of the pandemic. The gap in pandemic-related closures is largest in
those regions and income levels where the sectoral distribution of entrepreneurs ismore balanced. For example, in high-income countries, women are better
represented across sectors, yet they were more likely to close their business due tothe pandemic (45% cited the pandemic as a reason for discontinuing their business,vs. 36% of men).
Of course, there may be additional explanatory factors — for example, differencesin the stringency of public health measures between countries. However, this might
support the suggestion that the experience of women entrepreneurs cannot be fully
explained by the kind of business that they run — namely that their businesses areoften smaller and in particularly hard-hit sectors. Instead, it indicates the presenceof specifically gendered factors. This accords with further emerging research on theexperience of women entrepreneurs through the pandemic.50
As we discuss below, one example is the increased care and domestic work burdenthat women faced during the pandemic. Our interview with Suzanne Biegel (seepage 104) echoes this point; she notes, “the lack of a functioning care economy” set
women back during the pandemic as they faced additional childcare, elder care,and disability care.
In this first chapter we have sketched out the global state of women
entrepreneurship as we emerge from the pandemic and we have pointed out there
are significant differences between women and men entrepreneurs. The nextquestion is: why? What explains the features of women entrepreneurs and womenled businesses? In the following chapter, we examine the barriers facing women
entrepreneurs that drive some of the gender gaps in this landscape.

50 Jesica Torres et al., The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women-Led
Businesses, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 9817, October 2021.

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Barriers Facing Women
Entrepreneurs
Women Entrepreneurs Face Significant Barriers Despite
Recent Progress
We saw in the previous chapter that women are less likely to be entrepreneurs andthat, when they are, their businesses clustered into lower margin sectors and wereless likely to grow into established businesses and employ staff. Part of this may be
attributed to the preferences of women entrepreneurs — they may actively prefer torun smaller businesses in particular sectors. However, in this chapter, we show thatbeyond these preferences, women entrepreneurs face barriers both in starting andgrowing their businesses. Indeed, 104 out of 190 (55%) countries still have legal
barriers to women's entrepreneurship.51 We find evidence of these barriers acrosssurvey-based data, as well as in conversations with women entrepreneurs.
All entrepreneurs face challenges, but
women entrepreneurs face specificgendered barriers

Before examining these barriers in general, we must note that different women facedifferent barriers, and some may face none at all. In the previous chapter, we
showed how the experience of entrepreneurship can vary greatly between
countries. Women’s experience of entrepreneurship is also partly determined bytheir demographic profile, meaning the educational achievements, income group,and social networks of a woman entrepreneur also shape the barriers that she will
face. Some women entrepreneurs emphasized the role existing networks played intheir entrepreneurial journeys. They noted these networks gave them a “leg up” inaccessing funding and growing their businesses. Further, not all of the challenges
women entrepreneurs face are gendered — entrepreneurship is challenging and, as
another woman entrepreneur told us, gender is not always a factor. However, as we
will see, women entrepreneurs face unique barriers as women and experience otherbarriers more acutely due to their gender.
To start with, it merits acknowledging that there has been significant progress and,in many countries, the position of women entrepreneurs is much improved in 2022
compared with a few decades ago:
 Today, women participate in entrepreneurship at 80% the rate of men according

to Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). This marks a significant improvement
over a two decade time horizon — the equivalent report in 2001 found thatwomen participated in entrepreneurship at roughly half the rate that men
did across the countries included in that year’s data set.52
 One index measuring the legal basis for the economic empowerment of women,

the Women, Business, and the Law index, has improved from an averagescore of less than 50% in 1971 to 76.5% in 2022. In low-income countries,
70% of the progress came in the last 25 years. (Figure 21).

51 World Bank, Women, Business and the Law 2022, 2022.
52 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, 2001 Executive Report, 2001.

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Figure 21. The Last 25 Years Have Seen More Significant Progress in the Legal Basis for the
Economic Empowerment of Women in Lower-Income Countries
100

1971

1996

2022

80
60
40
20
0
Low income

Lower-middle
incomeUpper-middle
incomeHigh income

Source: World Bank WBL 1971-2022

Yet, despite some positive moment, women entrepreneurs still face significant
barriers. In 2022, only 12 countries received a perfect score across all eightindicators of the Women, Business and the Law index. All 12 are high income
countries.53 Gendered barriers still remain in many countries. Women entrepreneursin lower-income countries in particular continue to build their businesses in legal
contexts that have both changed less and remain less accommodating. We explore
this further in conversation with law and governance expert Angeli Arora on page
58. The pandemic is widely expected to have set progress back for women
entrepreneurs, yet investing in women could be key to recovery. It is vital, therefore,
to understand the barriers women face and the reasons behind them to be better
informed on how to address them.
Women entrepreneurs face challenges
across two categories: access to financeand participation in public life and thebusiness ecosystem

The barriers faced by women entrepreneurs can be split into two categories: (1)access to finance and (2) participation in public life and the business ecosystem. As
Figure 22 shows, these barriers impact different stages of business development.
Some affect the perception of business opportunities, while others affect businessgrowth and the whole lifecycle of the business. However, while these barriers canbe listed individually, they do not operate in isolation and will not be overcome
individually. Most of these barriers affect women across both developed andemerging markets. We have highlighted those that are felt more acutely by women
entrepreneurs in emerging economies in orange.

53 See the Women, Business and the Law (WBL) index 1971-2022. Belgium, Canada,

Denmark, France, Greece, Ireland, Iceland, Luxembourg, Latvia, Portugal, Spain, andSweden all scored a perfect 100 in the 2022 WBL index.

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Figure 22. Women Entrepreneurs Face Various Barriers at Different Stages of Their Entrepreneurial Lifecycle

Source: Citi Global Insights© 2022 Citigroup

March 2022

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Women Entrepreneurs Struggle to Access
Finance
Access to finance constrains women
entrepreneurs across all stages of businessgrowth and across all regions

In our conversations with various women entrepreneurs, the most common theme
was difficulty accessing credit. This is echoed in the literature as a difficulty that
impacts many women entrepreneurs across developed and emerging markets andacross the stages of entrepreneurship, from start-up to established business andbeyond.54

Women struggle to access venture capitaland the situation is even worse for diverse
women

The 2020 PitchBook review of female founders emphasized that while there wasnoticeable progress on routing venture capital to women in the decade up to 20189,
women entrepreneurs still struggle to access capital — especially in the COVID-19
year of 2020.55 According to PitchBook data on Europe, businesses with one female
founder accounted for just €2.5 billion of the capital raised by start-ups in the region
over the period 2017-2021. This compared with over €187 billion raised by start-ups
without a female founder.56 Comparable data for the U.S. shows that despite abumper year for venture capital in 2021, women-led businesses still only accounted
for 2% of venture capital dollars invested.57 In Israel, 28.3% of overall venture
capital went to women-led companies. Demographic data is lacking and it is difficult
to understand the situation for women entrepreneurs who face other demographic
challenges, such as race. However, statistics show that at least in the venture
capital arena, women entrepreneurs of color have even less access to capital.
Research on the U.S. in 2019 by January Ventures found that for every $1 raised bya male entrepreneur, women founders raised $0.38 and Black women founders
raised just $0.02.58 To put it even more starkly, ProjectDiane, a data collection effort
by the non-profit “digitalundivided,” finds that since 2009, 0.6% of U.S. venture
capital has gone to Black women entrepreneurs.59 This is despite research thatsuggests women of color are the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs with 17%
of Black women in the U.S. starting businesses, compared with 15% of U.S.-based
white men and 10% of white women.60
Recent studies have focused more on developed markets, but as venture capitalfunds in emerging markets grow, they seem to be replicating the same gender gap.
According to Crunchbase data, although start-ups in Latin America raised $4.4
billion in 2020, none of this went to businesses led by women without a male

54 For example, The Alison Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship, commissioned by
HM Treasury, 2019; World Economic Forum, Unleashing the Power of Europe’s Women
Entrepreneurs: Six Ideas to Drive Big Change, January 2020; Ana Revenga and
Meaghan Dooley, “What Works for Women Microentrepreneurs?” Brookings, September
16, 2020.
55 PitchBook, All In: Female Founders and CEOs in the US VC Ecosystem, 2020.
56 Leah Hodgson, “Senior Female VCs Call Out Major Funding Disparity in Europe,”
PitchBook, July 27, 2021.
57 Jordan Rubio and Priyamvada Mathur, “An Exceptional Year for Female Founders Still
Means a Sliver of VC Funding,” PitchBook, January 10, 2022.
58 January Ventures, “Jane VC Founder Survey Reveals Inequities in Tech Start Early,”
Medium, March 21, 2019.
59 Geri Stengel, “Black Female Founder Uses Network to Raise VC Funds for BlackOriented Businesses,” Forbes, May 12, 2021.
60 Donna Kelley, Mahdi Majbouri, and Angela Randolph, “Black Women Are More Likely
to Start a Business Than White Men,” Harvard Business Review, May 11, 2021.

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business partner. The situation wasn’t much better in 2019 when just $14 million of
the $4.5 billion went to women-led businesses.61
Similarly, a report by the Africa Gender Innovation Lab on start-up financing on thecontinent found that only 3% of early-stage funding went to all-women teams — theparallel figure for all-men teams was 75%.62
The pandemic worsened access to finance for women entrepreneurs. According to
Crunchbase data, after reaching an all-time high in 2019 (2.8% of all VC funding —an already very low figure), global venture capital funding to women-led businesses
fell to 2.3% in 2020.63 It is not yet clear whether this decline was driven by thedemand side or the supply side, i.e., whether fewer women entrepreneurs sought
funding, or fewer investors backed women-led businesses. However, some havesuggested these declines were not completely driven a fall in demand. Speaking at
the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women’s “Women Entrepreneurs Mean Business”
2021 summit, Professor Linda Scott noted the tendency of businesses to roll backon their gender commitments during the pandemic, in favor of “less risky” or “moreimportant” strategies.64 While she was not speaking directly of venture capitalists,
her logic applies here given the frequent misperception of risk associated withwomen-led businesses. Similarly, a report by Women in VC argued that women
venture capitalists faced headwinds in closing funds due to the economic
uncertainty brought about by the pandemic.65 Again, the same logic might apply towomen-led businesses seeking capital.
Women entrepreneurs struggle to accessbank loans across developed and emerging
economies

While the venture capital funding gap is well documented, women face financing
barriers much earlier in the growth of their businesses. For example, a 2021 surveyof women entrepreneurs in low- and middle-income countries found that 36% of
women cited access to finance as their main challenge: only 16% of respondents
had secured an investment or loan from a bank and just 6% had accessed abusiness loan.66 Looking at SME financing, the International Finance Corporation(IFC) estimated the unmet credit demand among women owners of SMEs inemerging markets was $1.5 trillion in 2017.67 An earlier report estimated that while
women led around a third of all SMEs, they accounted for just 14%-19% of SME
loans.68 The situation was worst in the Middle East and North Africa where thefigure was <6%.

61 Isabela Fleischmann and Anna Lima, “In a Crowded 2020 for Funding in Latin

America, None of the $.4.4 Billion Went to Female-only Founded Stat-Ups,” Latin
America Business Stories, updated February 5, 2021..
62 Rachel Coleman, Menaal Ebrahim, and Toni Weis, “As African Venture Capital
Booms, Are Female Founders Losing Out?” World Bank Blogs, October 15, 2021.
63 Ashley Bittner and Brigette Lau, “Women-Led Start-Ups Received Just 2.3% of VC
Funding in 2020,” Harvard Business Review, February 25, 2021.
64 Linda Scott, “Are Women-Owned Businesses Getting Cheated in Procurement PostCOVID?” (presentation, Cherie Blair Foundation for Women “Women Entrepreneurs
Mean Business” virtual summit, November 11, 2021).
65 Women in VC, The Untapped Potential of Women-Led Funds, October 2020.
66 Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, Women Entrepreneurs: Surviving the Pandemic
and Beyond, March 2021; Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, Gender Stereotypes andTheir Impact on Women Entrepreneurs, November 2021.
67 “MSME Finance Gap Database,” International Finance Corporation, last modified
October 2018.
68 International Finance Corporation, Women-Owned SMEs: A Business Opportunity for
Financial Institutions, 2014.

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Just as difficulties accessing venture capital are not confined to developed markets,difficulties accessing bank loans or early stage funding are not confined todeveloping economies or low-income countries. An analysis of the U.K. foundwomen start businesses with 53% less capital on average than men, with women
81% less likely to feel they could access the funds they needed to start abusiness.69 A separate study of bank loans in Spain found women-led businesses
were both less likely to seek loan funding and less likely to be offered a loan in theirfirst year of business when they did apply.70
Four key drivers of the borrowing gap

Not only do women face challenges in accessing finance across regions, but theyalso face challenges regardless of the growth of their businesses. Various factors
drive this borrowing gap, experienced in different ways by women in different
economies: In emerging markets, potential women-borrowers are lost at the first hurdle as

they struggle to access financial services at the level of bank account access,hindering their ability to save and their understanding of credit. In developed
markets a savings gap emerges even as account access is close to parity.
 SME loans often require collateral — which women disproportionately lack —and in emerging markets in particular, may be legally prohibited from owning or
simply less likely to own due to cultural norms.
 In both developed and emerging economies, lenders overestimate the risk oflending to and investing in women entrepreneurs, failing to appreciate theupside or understand tools to mitigate the downside.
 A lack of women investors, or women investors with decision-making powers,

colors women’s experience of capital raising in both developed and emerging
economies. The lack of women CV investors is often considered a key factor,
with a 2020 report from Women in VC arguing that to route more funding to
women-led businesses, the focus should shift upstream to consider the diversityof investors.71

Women are Underserved by the Financial Services Sector
Limited access to finance includes gaps inaccess to bank accounts…

The borrowing gap that we have sketched is just one of the gaps women face inaccessing financial services. There are related gaps at both the account access andsavings levels. These parallel gaps in part predict the difficulties that women
entrepreneurs face in accessing credit. For example, if an individual woman does
not have access to a bank account, then she will not be able to access either
savings or credit products. However, other factors play a significant role. As Kyla
Gineitis notes in our interview with her (see page 52), these gaps in access tofinancial services start with socio-cultural norms and the lack of digital and financial
education provided to women, especially in emerging markets.

69 The Alison Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship, commissioned by HM Treasury,

2019.
70 Pablo de Andres, Ricardo Gimeno, and Ruth Mateos de Cabo, “The Gender Gap inBank Credit Access,” Journal of Corporate Finance 71 (December 2021).
71 Women in VC, The Untapped Potential of Women-Led Funds, October 2020.

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In emerging markets, only 30% of women have access to a bank account. This is a
low absolute figure, but there is also a significant gender gap that has been
stubbornly persistent. Despite more than a billion adults worldwide gaining accessto a bank account in the last decade, data shows the gender gap remained: in lowand middle-income countries, men are still nine percentage points more likely than
women to have a bank account — a figure that has remained constant.72 One driveris Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements which require paperwork and proof ofidentity that women are less likely to have. In some countries, barriers to accountaccess is even more obviously gendered: we spoke to one woman entrepreneur inPakistan who recalled being asked why she would need a bank account when she
could use the account of her father or husband. Lacking access to a bank accountis a significant limitation on women’s empowerment — economic and otherwise.
Another woman entrepreneur operating in Brazil, emphasized it is often the root ofother problems relating to independence and violence.

% Reporting Access to a Bank AccountFigure 23. There Remain Gender Gaps in Access to Bank Accounts, Particularly in LowerIncome Countries
100%

Male (age 15+)

Female (age 15+)

80%

60%

40%

20%

0%
Low income

Lower-middle
incomeUpper-middle
incomeHigh income

Source: Global Findex 2017…and gaps in access to savings products

There is also a gender gap in savings. While not all account owners of either genderand in any income category make use of savings products, more men do so than
women. Interestingly, globally, the gap here is smaller than in initial access to abank account. The incongruity between the precise size of the account access gap
and savings gap indicates that the former is not the sole driver of the latter. Rather,
the material conditions of women’s lives play a significant role — one study of the
U.K. indicates the savings gap may be attributed to women working in lower paidroles than men, driving them to borrow because they cannot save from their salary
before starting a business.73 Similarly, when it comes to business growth, if womenled businesses are on the whole less profitable, as some studies have suggested
they are (when they do not have access to the same support as men-led
businesses), their owners will have less to save.74

72 Jake Hess, Leora Klapper, and Kathleen Beegle, Financial Inclusion, Women, andBuilding Back Better, World Bank, June 2021.
73 The Allison Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship, commissioned by HM

Treasury, 2019.
74 Lee Allison et al., Gender and Firm Performance around the World: The Roles ofFinance, Technology, and Labor, SSRN, January 12, 2021.

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41

The presence of this gender gap in saving with a financial institution indicates weshould not attribute (all of) the borrowing gap to women’s preferences. Somesuggest women have less appetite for credit or are so risk-averse they do not wantto access loan financing. However, while some studies do suggest women are lesslikely to apply for credit and women are less likely to take financial risks more
broadly, there is also a gap in access to savings products with financial institutions
indicating there is a broader gap in access to financial services, the explanation forwhich transcends an appeal to different risk appetites.75
Figure 24. Gaps in Savings Rates with Financial Institutions Persist
7%

Average Borrowing Gap

Average Savings Gap

6%
5%
4%
3%
2%
1%
0%
Low income

Lower-middle
incomeUpper-middle
incomeHigh income

Source: Global Findex 2017
The savings gap results in a businessresilience gap

Just as the gap in bank account access risks consequences around independence
and violence, the savings gap also has consequences. Savings provide resilienceduring periods of shock. During the pandemic, women entrepreneurs’ lack ofsavings resulted in their cash reserves lasting for a shorter period of time. Data from49 mainly low- and middle-income countries shows women-led businesses reported
larger declines in revenue than their male counterparts, with a difference of two
percentage points that remained even when controlling for the size and sector of abusiness.76 This greater decline in revenue pushed more women-led businesses torely on financial reserves, but there was a second gap — men-led firms reported
they had an average of 70 days of cash available to cover costs, while the figure forwomen was just 61.77 For the same decline in sales, women reported a smaller
number of days of cash available (Figure 25, left) and were more likely to fall into
arrears. (Figure 25, right)

75 See n. 66 above; David Blake, Edmund Cannon, and Douglas Wright, Quantifying

Loss Aversion: Evidence from a U.K. Population Survey Pensions Institute, Discussion
Paper PI-1912, October 2019.
76 Jesica Torres et al., The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women-Led
Businesses, World Bank, Policy Research Working Paper 9817, October 2021.
77 Ibid.

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Figure 25. Correlation Between Financial Risks and Change in Sales Revenue

Source: Torres et al. 2021

Further, while savings was crucial to weather pandemic-related closures, thefinancial difficulties brought by the pandemic further inhibited women’s ability tosave. First, more men sought control over the economic resources of theirhousehold, leaving women with both less resources in the short term and less ability
to save. In a survey of Nigerian women, 29% reported experiencing economic
coercion since the start of the pandemic, including having to give their cash to
another family member, family members refusing to spend money on household
necessities, or another family member taking money against their will.78 Second,
women disproportionately lost employment during the pandemic, which again
resulted in them having fewer resources to save.79 In sum, during the pandemic,
women entrepreneurs may have lost what little savings ability they had.

Women Entrepreneurs Lack Access to Collateral Against
Which to Borrow
Collateral requirements constrain women’s
access to credit

Lending for SMEs often requires collateral and the percentage of SME loans that
require collateral varies between countries. For countries supplying data in 2018,
the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimatesthat 60% of SMEs needed collateral to obtain bank lending, though this ranged from
100% of SMEs requiring collateral in the Slovak Republic to under 5% in France.80
The average may be higher in developing economies. The most common form ofcollateral is land, of which women own less, especially in emerging markets.
Understanding how much land women own, and how much they could use as
collateral is difficult. Co-ownership between men and women problematizes
estimations. However, a 2018 briefing from the UN reports that just 15% of all
agricultural landowners are women, with regional variation, e.g., in the Middle East
78 Clare Clingain et al., Women’s Economic Empower in the Face of COVID-19 and

Displacement: Restoring Resilient Futures, ODI and the International Rescue
Committee, HPG commissioned report, 2021.
79 Vipasana Karkee and Marie-Claire Sodergren, “How Women Are Being Left Behind in
the Quest for Decent Work for All,” International Labour Organization, March 29, 2021.
80 OECD, Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs 2020: An OECD Scoreboard, April 22,
2020.

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and North Africa the figure is closer to 5%.81 Moreover, examining the SME lending
baseline shows that women borrow significantly less than men using land as
collateral.82 A documentation problem compounds this issue: even where women do
own land, they are less likely to have paperwork proving their ownership.83 Hence,even if women do own land, struggling to prove their ownership limits their ability toborrow against it.
In 19 countries, there is a legal barrier — women are legally prohibited from owningland or immovable assets in the same way as men (see Figure 26).84 The majorityof these countries are low- or middle-income countries. However, despite legal
barriers being dissolved in most developed economies, cultural and practicalbarriers remain. Assets are often owned by a man as the head of the household due
to cultural views around the role of women.

81 Food and Agriculture Organizations of the United Nations, The Gender Gap in Land

Rights, 2018.
82 International Finance Corporation, Women-Owned SMEs: A Business Opportunity for

Financial Institutions, 2014.
83 Food and Agriculture Organizations of the United Nations, The Gender Gap in Land

Rights, 2018.
84 World Bank, Women, Business and the Law Index, 2021.

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This is especially the case for agricultural land, which has been cited as a particular
problem on the African continent.85 Similarly at the practical level, more assets may
be owned by men because women tend to be lower earners and therefore cannot
purchase assets independently or own less of a stake in those purchased in apartnership. Whether the barrier is legal or otherwise, the result is the same:
women, especially women in emerging markets, lack ownership of land, resulting in
an inability to borrow.
Figure 26. Women Do Not Have Equal Ownership Rights to Immovable Property in 19 Countries(10% of Total Countries)

Women and men have equal ownership rights to immovable property
Women and men do not have equal ownership rights to immovable property

Source: WBL Index 2022

Lenders and Investors Consider Women-led Businesses a
Risky Investment
Women entrepreneurs access different
kinds of financing

Lack of collateral contributes to lenders’ perception of women as riskier borrowers,
which is reflected in the financial products offered to women — when any are
offered — and the amount of credit extended to them. IFC’s SME Gender Baseline
shows that women-led businesses in emerging markets are more likely to haveshort-term loans than overdraft funding. Overdrafts may be considered a riskier
form of credit as they often do not require collateral, the borrower has a higher
degree of flexibility in the time to repayment, and the interest rate charged is often
correspondingly higher. Indeed, when women are financed by overdrafts, the value
is less than half of the financing amount given to male-owned SMEs. According to
the same data set, the average value at origination of loans to women
entrepreneurs is lower than the value of those made to men. Whether looking at themedian or the mean, the average size of loans to women was just over 75% of thevalue of loans made to men.86

85 Adeoye O. Akinola, “Women, Culture, and Africa’s Land Reform Agenda,” Frontiers in

Psychology, November 2018.
86 International Finance Corporation, Women-Owned SMEs: A Business Opportunity for

Financial Institutions, 2014.

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45

Figure 27. Type of Loan Product Used and Loan Amount at Origination: 2011-12
Loan Amount for Loan Amount for
Women-Owned
Men-Owned
SMEs (Median) SMEs (Median)Credit Line$
94,559 $104,925
Invoice Discounting$
125,000 $528,630
Lease$
47,059 $59,696Long-Term Loans (>3yrs)$
116,279 $
126,444
Medium-Term Loans (1-3yrs) $27,216 $38,889Other$
119,089 $
222,306
Overdraft (for working capital) $43,801 $88,889
Short-Term Loans (<1yr)$
83,000 $103,220

Ratio
(W/M)
90.1%
23.6%
78.8%
92.0%
70.0%
53.6%
49.3%
80.4%

Source: IFC SME Gender Baseline, 2014

Despite the perception, evidence shows that women entrepreneurs are not riskier
borrowers and the gender of a borrower is therefore not a relevant metric in theevaluation of loan applications. Nevertheless, in many countries, discrimination inaccess to credit on the basis of gender is still legal in more countries than it isillegal. In only 45% of countries is gender discrimination in access to credit
prohibited (see Figure 28). This legal issue is not confined to either developed or
emerging countries as there are countries across the income spectrum in whichaccess to credit differs legally by gender. Moreover, some countries which otherwisescore very highly in the Women, Business and the Law index still allow
discrimination in access to credit. The best example is Norway, which scored 96.9%
in the 2022 index; permitting gender discrimination in access to credit was the only
remaining negative indicator in its 2022 index score.87
Stereotypes play a significant role inperceptions of women as riskier borrowers

Even when the law plays no part, access to finance is hindered by stereotyping
which encourages the view that lending to women is riskier: in low- and middleincome countries, 23% of women reported experiencing stereotypes or remarks
implying gender discrimination while trying to access financing.88 We should notconsider this a unique phenomenon in emerging markets as women entrepreneurs
we spoke to around the world shared with us their experience of this same
discrimination.
One woman in the FinTech space recalled being asked if she was “cut throat”
enough and whether she had the “killer instinct.” The assumption was that, as awoman, she must not, on account of the stereotype that as women first andentrepreneurs second, entrepreneurial women do not meet the profile investors andlenders have of “successful” entrepreneurs. The same entrepreneur commented
that programs to help women access funding tried to make their behavior echo thatof men — she considered the price of accessing financing to be sidelining femininity
on account of the stereotypes that accompany it. Another woman entrepreneur told
us that she goes into the process of capital raising with her eyes open.

87 The impact of this legal discrimination in Norway in particular appears to be an area

where more research is required. The rate of entrepreneurship sees a significant gender
gap: 4.9% of women are entrepreneurs vs. 10.3% of men. Women in Norway also seemto struggle to grow their business: the ratio of women to men who are solo entrepreneurs
is 150%. However, in 2020/21 no women reported discontinuing their business due to alack of access to finance.
88 Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, Gender Stereotypes and Their Impact on Women
Entrepreneurs, November 2021.

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She added, “You know it will be harder, so you go with a bit more resilience knowingthat you will have to do that much more.” Many of the women entrepreneurs we
spoke to mentioned they are frequently asked personal questions not relevant totheir business, but these questions are not posed to their male counterparts.
Figure 28. More Countries Allow Gender Discrimination in the Access of Credit Than Prohibit It

Law prohibits discrimination in access to credit on the basis of gender
Law does not prohibit discrimination in access to credit on the basis of gender
Source: WBL 2022

This misperception of risk is not only found in bank lending; it also results in women
receiving different kinds of financing. An IFC study on the impact of accelerators
found that while accelerators might make it easier for women to raise debt
financing, in contrast to men-led businesses, they had little impact on their ability toraise equity. In emerging markets after accelerator programs, men-led businesses
were 2.6x more likely to raise equity financing than businesses led by women.89
Similarly in the U.S., data show that women are much closer to parity in raising debt
financing than in equity financing (see Figure 29). This again is likely due to theperceived risks of investing in and lending to women.
Figure 29. Value of Debt and Equity Financing Raised by Male-Led and Female-Led Start-Ups
Worldwide in 2020 ($’000s)
35

Value (US$ '000s)

30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Debt financing

Equity financing
Male-led

Female-led

Source: Statista, Citi Global Data Insights

89 International Finance Corporation, “Accelerators Accentuate the Gender Finance Gap

for Women Entrepreneurs in Emerging Markets,” press release, February 16, 2020.

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At the venture capital stage, emerging evidence shows the perception of women as
riskier leads investors to ask different questions. One study found that women are
asked “prevention-focused” questions while men are asked “promotion-focused”
questions.90 In other words, women are asked how they will prevent losses or how
they will mitigate the downside risks of their business, while the same investors ask
men how they will succeed or what the upside is. This sentiment was echoed bymany women entrepreneurs we spoke to who noticed the difference between thequestions they were asked and those posed to their male colleagues. A Denmarkbased woman entrepreneur told us she was struck by a particularly productive andenjoyable conversation with a potential investor. It was only afterwards that she
realized they had been discussing questions about the potential of her business —which was a marked diversion from the questions investors usually ask her as awoman.
Women are not a homogenous group anddiverse women face even bigger barriers

Diverse and marginalized women entrepreneurs face even more challenges andconstraints in accessing finance. The case study below from the International
Rescue Committee (IRC) provides an example and illustrates the additionaldifficulties marginalized women affected by conflict and displacement face inpursing business opportunities.

Barriers Faced by Displaced Women in Pursuit of Economic Opportunities
Clare Clingain — Research Coordinator, International Rescue Committee (IRC)
Marginalized women affected by conflict and displacement are even more economically disadvantaged than theircounterparts in more stable settings.91 Despite research finding that improved access to work opportunities would widely
benefit displaced women and their families, women affected by displacement continue to encounter barriers — whether
financial, material, legal, social, or educational — in their pursuit of economic opportunities and stable livelihoods.92
Research conducted by the IRC revealed that women affected by displacement — whether refugees, internallydisplaced persons (IDPs), or host community members — tend to experience significant constraints on their economic
empowerment, though the specific barriers women face and how they may experience them are often context- andsubgroup-specific.
Constraints include, but are not limited to: insecurity; discrimination; lack of capital, legal documentation, skills or
education certification; affordable childcare; and little or no access to financial services. In Kenya and Niger, womencited lack of capital as a major hindrance to starting up economic activities or growing their businesses.93 Congolese
refugees in Kenya and refugees in Germany faced additional challenges in that their diplomas and work experience
were not recognized in their host country, which prevented them from engaging in trades in which certification isrequired.

90 Dana Kanze et al., “We Ask Men to Win and Women Not to Lose: Closing the Gender
Gap in Start-up Funding,” Academy of Management Journal 61, no. 2, (April 2018).
91 Daphne Jayasinghe, Choices, Chances and Safety in Crisis: A Model for Women’s
Economic Empowerment, International Rescue Committee, January 2019.
92 Raiyan Kabir and Jeni Klugman, Unlocking Refugee Women’s Potential: Closing
Economic Gaps to Benefit All, RescueWorks, July 2019.
93 Emille Getliffe and Sana Khan, Scaling Economic Opportunities for Refugee Women:
Understanding and Overcoming Obstacles to Women’s Economic Empowerment,International Rescue Committee, 2020.

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Meet Lydia
Lydia fled her home in Northeast Nigeria to Yola, Nigeria after armed opposition groups arrived in her hometown.
Supported by her husband, Lydia started making shoes to bring much-needed income into the household to support her
family. After three years of shoemaking, Lydia took part in IRC’s Back My Business training program, supported by theCiti Foundation. The training provided her with the capital and inputs she lacked to grow her business:“Before the course, I had a business idea, but not a business plan or money to start it. In the training I learned how tomake the business plan and as soon as I finished my training course and was given the funding, I went to buy
everything I needed for my business. I bought a generator and all my equipment and I started to rent the shop.”Tied to lack of access to capital is displaced women’s lack of access to financial services at banks or microfinanceinstitutions, which often do not allow refugee IDs as a valid proof of identity to obtain loans or open bank accounts, andhave complex bureaucratic procedures that displaced women struggle to navigate.94 As such, formal financial services
remain out of reach for many refugees, who instead turn to family and friends for financial help.95 Recent analysis showsfinancial inclusion disparities between displaced women and host men, and displaced women and men, showing how
displacement compounds gender inequality.96 In Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia, and Sudan, differences in financial inclusion
between displaced men and women were within two percentage points of each other, but ranged from around 2% in
Ethiopia to 59% in Somalia. Between displaced women and host men, gaps ranged as high as 1,063% in Ethiopia andsurpassed 50% in Nigeria and Sudan. The financial inclusion gaps illustrated by the Women, Peace and Security index
impact displaced women’s ability to accumulate savings, recover faster from inevitable shocks, and pursue employment.
The social norms and dynamics that shape women’s opportunities and choices are some of the most prevalent barriers.
Such norms determine expectations on whether and how women can engage in income-generating activities. Certain
trades may be considered more acceptable for women, or male household members may expect that women do notwork outside of the home. However, this may differ across refugee communities; compared to Somali refugees in
Kenya, Congolese refugee women said their husbands encourage them to pursue income-generating activities.97 Even
if working is socially acceptable for women, expectations around unpaid care work and other household responsibilities
may prevent women from pursuing paid work opportunities. For example, both host community and displaced women in
Greece and Jordan claimed that personal and household responsibilities limited their ability to realize economic
opportunities.98
Aside from navigating social norms, many women may feel a lack of confidence in their ability to start a business, ormay fear violence, harassment, or social stigma. Women may also lack control over household financial resources,
including having to turn over their own earnings to their husband. This diminishes women’s ability to start up and invest
in income-generating activities.

94 Anneleen Vos and Kelsey Weber, COVID-19 and Refugees’ Economic Opportunities,
Financial Services, and Digital Inclusion, International Rescue Committee, November
2020.
95 Clare Clingain et al., Women’s Economic Empower in the Face of COVID-19 and
Displacement: Restoring Resilient Futures, ODI and the International Rescue
Committee, HPG commissioned report, 2021.
96 Jeni Klugman et al., The Women Peace and Security Index: A New Lens on Forced
Displacement, Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security and theInternational Rescue Committee, 2021.
97 Emille Getliffe and Sana Khan, Scaling Economic Opportunities for Refugee Women:
Understanding and Overcoming Obstacles to Women’s Economic Empowerment,International Rescue Committee, 2020.
98 Clare Clingain et al., Women’s Economic Empower in the Face of COVID-19 and
Displacement: Restoring Resilient Futures, ODI and the International Rescue
Committee, HPG commissioned report, 2021

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Given the number of institutional and legal challenges that displaced women can face in accessing formal, salaried
employment, many turn to entrepreneurship. Starting one’s own business also offers greater flexibility to women inmeeting care needs, household responsibilities, and navigating social norms. IRC supports refugee, IDP, and hostcommunity women to start and grow their own businesses through various microenterprise services such as financial
literacy training, business grants, apprenticeships, and mentorship.

Meet Rehab
Rehab is a Syrian refugee living in Jordan who works as a tailor. Participating in IRC’s Back My Business program
allowed Rehab to buy the proper equipment for her business. Despite her husband telling her not to work, Rehab
believes her work to be important as it helps her pay for medical treatment for her daughter.
“I do my best to get my daughter’s treatment, that’s what makes me to do a business. She asked: How are you going towork, mum? And why do you need to do that? I told her I do it for you. She asked: Why for me? I told her to get you
quality education [She said] I like this job mum, I want to learn it. I told her: I’ll teach it to you when you grow up.”
Rehab reveals that owning a business has benefits beyond improved economic well-being for the household. Earning
an income makes Rehab feel strong. She says that it’s important for women to have their own business because it“helps them feel good and to support their children. Plus [it gets] them access to quality education. It changes yourmood when a customer comes to you. It’ll help you feel good talking to customers. It changes how you feel. It helps you
forget the past a bit.”
Increasingly, it is clear that a “one-size-fits all approach” is inappropriate in addressing women’s needs as so many
barriers, needs, and preferences are context- and subgroup-specific. It is important that programs and policies
simultaneously address the effects of multiple intersecting inequalities and discrimination faced by women affected bydisplacement, to ensure that their needs and priorities are addressed holistically. The success of interventions relies on
multi-year, flexible funding towards investments and programming focusing on comprehensive and gendertransformative interventions, products, and services to simultaneously increase access and agency. Over the past year,
the IRC tested five programmatic pilots in Germany, Kenya, and Niger that incorporated women’s preferences and build
off of recently completed evidence from each country (brief forthcoming). The promising results and overall positive
client feedback suggest that designing programming based on women’s needs and preferences is crucial in promoting
women’s economic and general well-being.

A Lack of Women Investors Restricts Access to Funding
There is a significant lack of womeninvestors

Banks and other investment vehicles are, in many cultures, more socially codified
as “masculine.” As we noted above, one woman entrepreneur in Pakistan told us ofa perception that banking products, even at the level of account access, were notsuitable for, or at least not needed by, women — who could instead make use ofaccounts available to her father or husband. A woman entrepreneur building her
business in emerging markets similarly reported to the Cherie Blair Foundation for
Women’s 2021 summit that going into a branch of a bank meant entering a space“for men” — upon visiting a branch to restructure her finances, she was asked if she
had come with her husband, or if the man standing behind was accompanying her.
While these perceptions might not apply to the physical spaces of banks indeveloped markets, they are driven by a lack of women in financial services, which
can be found across emerging and developed markets.
The entrepreneurs with whom we met across emerging and developed economies
told us that potential investors were most often men and, even where they met withwomen, these women were not in roles that allowed them to make a funding offer.
Senior, general partner positions with decision-making powers were typically filledby men. Moreover, one woman entrepreneur suggested that wealth managementadvisors are also predominantly men, with the result that limited partners do notconsider the gender balance of the portfolios their capital supports.

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This is reflected in the data: a 2020 report found that just 4.9% of venture capital
partners in the U.S. are women and, with women-led funds having started more
recently, 90% of the funds led by women were considered “emerging” managers.99
In the U.K., women represent just 27% of the venture capital workforce (vs. 47% of
the overall workforce) and only 13% of investment decision-making roles are filled
by women. In the U.S., women and minority-led funds manage 1.3% of the $69
trillion asset management industry with 10% of decision-making roles in venture
capital firms held by women.100
Clare Murray, one of the co-founders at Blume Equity, described the even higher
barrier to entry facing women breaking into private equity (versus venture capital).
She noted that this was driven by both the need to attract additional investment tomeet PE ticket size requirements, which affects the type of investors one targets, aswell as the general partner (GP) fund commitment amounts. In conversation, Clareadded:“Institutional investors have stringent diligence processes, which include assessing
managers’ track records to understand the role an investor played in taking an
investment from sourcing all the way through to an exit. This assumes women havebeen in senior, decision making roles at their prior firms, which greatly limits thenumber of female investors who have tenured enough track records to start theirown fund endeavors. Also, maternity leaves often cause disruptions to female
investors’ track records. In addition, larger amounts of capital raised directly
correlates to the size of the GP commit, which institutional investors want to see sothat the managers have “skin in the game.” Again, this relies on women having
created enough personal wealth prior in their careers to be able to fund thiscommitment.”
Moreover, data from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) shows that women are
also underrepresented at the level of individual, personal investment. GEM datashows that at the global level, the ratio of women to men reporting they haveinvested in a business was 70%. When we look at the median amount invested, thisfalls to just 50%. The picture is the same across all income levels and all regions,with the biggest gaps appearing for the likelihood of investment in high-income
countries, and for the size of the investment in low-income countries. Fromindividual investors to credit officers and commercial bankers to asset managementadvisors, women are underrepresented on the investor side of the table.

99 Women in VC, The Untapped Potential of Women-Led Funds, October 2020.
100 European Investment Bank, Funding Women Entrepreneurs: How to Empower

Growth, June 2020.

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Figure 30. Women Are Less Likely to Have Invested in a Business
Across All Income Levels…

51

Figure 31. …And Across All Regions

Middle East and Africa

High income

Latin America andCaribbean
Middle income
Europe and North
America
Low income
Central and East Asia
0

2

4

% TEA Men

6

8

10

12

0

% TEA Women

Source: GEM 2020/21
Closing the gender gap among investors
could help to close the financing gap among
entrepreneurs% TEA Men

5

10

15

20

% TEA Women

Source: GEM 2020/21

Some women entrepreneurs suggested the lack of women investors in part
accounts for the lack of investment in women-led businesses because men
investors were less likely to understand the business opportunities presented tothem, or the challenges a women-focused product tackles. With more womeninvestors, the argument goes, the funding gap will close. Juliet Bailin at General
Catalyst told us, “The industry is one of homophily,” with investors backing
businesses run by people who feel familiar to them, just by a quirk of psychology
rather than any malevolent intention. At the angel and venture capital stages,
evidence supports this as improving diversity among investors does have adownstream effect on improving diversity among portfolio companies. One reportfound that female venture capital partners are twice as likely to invest in companies
with at least one female founder and three times as likely to invest in companies
with a female CEO.101 Citing these figures, one report argues that a central tool for
improving women entrepreneurs’ access to finance is increasing the upstream
diversity of investors.102 This speaks only of the U.S., but as discussed above, as
venture capital in emerging markets grows, it is replicating the gender gaps of its
developed markets counterpart.
Beyond a differentiated understanding of the products that women-led businesses
might be more likely to bring to market, another possible explanation is that womeninvestors are better connected with women entrepreneurs and this leads to a higher
density of women entrepreneurs in women investors’ pipelines. In conversation,
Katie Palencsar, Managing Director and Global Head of Venture Studio and Elise
Brown, Director of Marketing at Anthemis Group, noted their diverse investment
team improved access to diverse founders and brought more diverse opportunities
into their pipeline through their own networks. They suggested that less diverse
investment teams might struggle to find businesses led by diverse entrepreneurs
because they are less connected to where these teams are starting businesses.
Katie added, “Women entrepreneurs are building in FinTech and waiting to be foundacross a whole range of verticals — investors just need to look in the right places.”

101 PitchBook, “PitchBook - All Raise Report on Venture Financing in Female-FoundedStart-ups Shows Progress, Yet Continued Inequity,” press release, November 12, 2019.
102 Women in VC, The Untapped Potential of Women-Led Funds, October 2020.

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While gender is certainly important here, Bianca Lopes and Beatriz Melges, the cofounders of Brazil-based Talle, emphasized that other factors have the same
dynamic: when women entrepreneurs in emerging markets create solutions aimed
at their own countries, it can be difficult to convince investors in developed markets— be they men or women — of the need for their product. This is an argument for
improving for diversity of investors beyond just gender diversity.
However, several women entrepreneurs we spoke to cautioned us against seeing
women investors as a total cure for the funding gap. One in particular noted thatmany of her harshest critics had been women and, making the situation worse, they
had hidden their unfair questions and criticisms under the guise of asking difficult
questions “before the men did.” Moreover, women investors, themselves operating
in a sector dominated by men, may be unwilling to take the risk of advocating for theopportunity that women-led businesses present. The need to increase the numbersof women investors is a twin problem, operating in step with the need to bettersupport women entrepreneurs, rather than a cure for it.
We spoke to our colleague Kyla Gineitis from Citi Social Finance to get her expert
opinion on access to finance for women entrepreneurs, especially in emerging
markets.

An Interview with Kyla Gineitis, Citi Social Finance
What do you see as the major barriers facing women entrepreneurs,
especially in emerging markets?
From the United States and United Kingdom to Mexico and India, women acrossthe globe have less access to financial services than their male counterparts.
Women trail men globally by seven percentage points when it comes to formal
account ownership, with only 65% of women having an account with a formal
financial institution compared to 72% of men.103 In emerging markets, limited
financial access is driven and exacerbated by cultural obstacles to women in theworkforce, including limited access to basic infrastructure, and limited basic services
like education and healthcare, childcare and finance.

Kyla Gineitis
Senior VP
Citi Social Finance

Women and girls living in emerging economies often face logistical barriers tojoining the formal economy. Obstacles range from trouble securing personal
identification to barriers within the home, where it is unlikely that a woman is
expected to contribute to the finances of her household. Women’s autonomy,
agency, and independence are hindered by lack of access to basic services, basic
infrastructure, and the sociocultural norms that continue to limit women’s rights.
Without access to loans, mobile and digital cellular connections, education, andreliable energy, women have limited opportunities to work and provide forthemselves and their families.
The COVID-19 pandemic effectively erased decades of progress on gender equity.
Globally, women have been disproportionately affected by the closure of
workplaces, schools, and public places. The pandemic exposes just how insecure
women’s employment is, especially in emerging economies. UN Women estimatesthat 740 million women globally work in the informal economy, and that their income
fell by 60% in the first month of the pandemic. Lockdowns across developed andemerging economies shuttered small businesses, many never to reopen.

103 World Bank, The Global Findex Database 2017: Measuring Financial Inclusion and

Fintech Revolution, 2018.

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In your opinion, what perpetuates the difficulty that women entrepreneurs inemerging markets face in accessing financing?
Women lack access to finance in emerging economies for a variety of cultural andsocio-economic reasons.104 Lack of collateral is a large reason, particularly because
for many families, deeds to land and housing are often listed under the man’s name.
Globally, one in five women cite lack of identification as a barrier to opening a bankaccount, and one in three married women from low-income countries have nocontrol over household expenses and major purchases.
The gender gap in access to finance does not start with account ownership. It
begins with underlying sociocultural norms and limited basic infrastructure such as
reduced access to education for women and girls, which contributes to lower levelsof digital and financial literacy. This often results in lower mobile phone ownershipand lower bank account ownership. Furthermore, to truly empower women
entrepreneurs, the barriers to equality must be addressed at all levels, not justaccess to finance as an adult. Access to basic services such as education areparamount to a woman’s ability to understand how to use a financial product, and toreaching a point where she can employ one as an entrepreneur.
Through Citi Social Finance, Citi has longstanding expertise in inclusive finance,with a 15-year track record of developing new business models and partnershipsthat leverage market-based approaches to support women through microfinanceand improve the livelihoods of underserved communities around the world.
Recognizing the array of interventions that help catalyze women’s empowerment,
Citi has evolved its approach to women’s empowerment, expanding the scope of
our work and impact, such as financing projects that increase access to healthcare,education, clean water, electricity, and smallholder agriculture.
How has the microfinance landscape, and lending to women entrepreneurs inparticular, evolved in recent decades? Are things getting better for women
entrepreneurs?
Digital channels offer incredible opportunities for women to rapidly overcome
barriers to entering markets. Traditional microfinance is rapidly moving online.
Digitization brings opportunity to women, including: Access to online financial literacy
 Access to purchasing, checking safety and reliability of suppliers Access to paying suppliers digitally instead of unsafely by cash Access to safer, more convenient cashless transactions
 Access to applying for and paying loans online, eliminating the need to travel to abranch Access to online platforms for connecting to clients through online marketplaces

and internet delivery service providers

104 UN Capital Development Fund, Inclusive Digital Economies and Gender Equality

Playbook, July 2021.

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These digital channels enable women to establish financial agency and freedom,
especially when they have access to their own dedicated mobile device. A woman
can open a bank account and start to save digitally, providing a safe and affordable
way to save. Often in emerging markets, women share accounts with the men in
their household, or have their accounts overseen. Digital means, like access to asmart phone, offer the basis for a new kind of independence and reducetransactional costs.
Has the pandemic had any impact on women entrepreneurs’ access tofinance?
The UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) estimates the economic impacts ofthe pandemic will push 47 million women and girls into extreme poverty.105 Further,
the World Economic Forum asserts that progress on gender equality is reversing,estimating that it will take 268 years to close the global gender gap.106 The message
is clear — global gender equity is regressing and must be addressed urgently.
The global microfinance institution (MFI) market, which has a client base of
predominantly women, has quickly responded and evolved to meet the everchanging needs of women throughout the pandemic. Funding from MFIs increased
to existing borrowers, helping them withstand the massive financial shocks related
to the pandemic. At the same time, loans to new borrowers continued to be made,albeit at slower growth rates than before the pandemic. Group lending, a leading
approach where women meet in repayment loan groups, was paused in many
countries as lockdowns rippled through the world. All at once, women lost theirconnection to community as well as repayment. New digital offerings allowed
women, who could not meet in person or attend a bank branch where they wereclosed, to access finance online.
While the microfinance market carries on, enormous strides must be made to help
women regain their financial footing and achieve equal access to finance.
Why does improving women entrepreneurs’ access to finance and women’s
financial inclusion more broadly matter?
Promoting women’s economic participation is both a moral and economic issue.107
The moral case for equal financial inclusion of women is clear. Access to finance forwomen entrepreneurs promotes agency, independence, and women’s selfconfidence. Supporting women’s financial independence can also result in a
reduction in violence towards women, and greater equality for all members ofsociety.
The world’s full economic and productive capacity can never be reached without thecontributions of half of the workforce. Access to finance leads to increased
economic opportunity and increased agency for the individual woman. Unlocking
women’s potential as entrepreneurs is one step towards changing views towards
how women can support their households, their families, and themselves.

105 Ibid.
106 World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Report 2021: Insight Report, March

2021.
107 Influenced by Christine Lagarde’s forward to Kalpana Kochhar, Sonali Jain-Chandra,

and Monique, Newiak, eds. Women, Work, and Economic Growth: Leveling the Playing
Field. International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC (2016).

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Some reports note that loans to SMEs are more severely lacking. How do you
think about microfinance clients aiming to grow their business? Where do
microfinance clients turn as they grow their businesses and need access tohigher value loans?
No single financial institution can serve everyone. It takes an ecosystem of
institutions large and small, local and global to reach the last mile. For many
microentrepreneurs looking to scale, products by local institutions are often
particularly beneficial, as they provide access to local currency, funding amounts
that are appropriate, and local customer support/relationships. These local
microfinance institutions partner with Citi as the bank’s clients to obtain thecommercial financing to back these solutions.
The evolution of a micro-borrower to a small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) is
well supported in emerging economies by the traditional microfinance market. Largesegment specific lenders offer tiered products which allow women borrowers toscale up as they grow. Citi also funds local banks with portfolios dedicated toserving underserved borrowers, and these clients are well suited to continue tosupport women owned businesses as they achieve scale.
What can financial institutions do to better serve women entrepreneurs inemerging markets?
Serving women entrepreneurs in emerging economies is intertwined with a genderequal approach to local economic development. Safe medicine, attainableeducation, a suitable home, reliable electricity, dependable clean water: financial
institutions can and must invest in basic infrastructure and services like these todrive real and meaningful development of local economies in emerging markets. To
support development in these areas and ensure it in a way that promotes genderequality, financial institutions need to embed gender lens investing principles into
their approach.
Applying a gender lens to investments is paramount to embedding genderinclusivity and equality. Large financial institutions can achieve commitments togender parity through supporting their clients as partners, with guidance towards
achieving, for example, the 2X Criteria for financing businesses for women. The 2X
Criteria filter investment for gender qualifications, including for example thebusiness being more than 51% owned by women, having over 30% women on thecompany’s board, or the company providing a product that specifically or
disproportionally benefits women. Financial institutions can adopt a gender lensanalysis on all investments to ensure it is being taken into consideration for whatbusinesses should be funded.

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Women Face Difficulties Participating in PublicLife and Business Ecosystems
Improving access to finance is not alone
enough — we see five additional barriers

Access to finance is only part of the story. A recent paper from the Brookings
Institution argues that while women are credit constrained, simply improving accessto finance without tackling additional barriers will have little impact.108 Women
entrepreneurs face a second category of barrier: across developed and emerging
markets, they are unable to fully participate in public life and, in particular, in thebusiness ecosystem. As Angeli Arora puts it in her interview on page 58, “Manybarriers for women entrepreneurs stem from harmful behaviors and attitudes
towards women more generally in society, which amongst other things create an unlevel playing field for them in business.” Different markets are at different stages ofprogress and have different considerations, but we see five additional barriers:
 Legal, cultural, and practical limitations on women’s mobility outside thehome Difficulty accessing national and international markets
 Difficulty growing networks, with links to mentors who can help navigate thebusiness ecosystem
 Lack of access to education and training, especially in business and digitalskills Disproportionate caring and domestic responsibilities, especially among

married women

Women Entrepreneurs Face Restricted Mobility at Legal,
Cultural, and Practical Levels
Limitations on women’s mobility constrain
their ability to do business

Women face limitations on their mobility that prevent them from conducting theirbusiness in the same way as men. In some cases, these limitations are encoded inlaw, in others they are imposed by social and cultural norms, and in others still they
are mandated by practical concerns around domestic responsibilities. In 14
countries, women are legally prevented from moving around outside of the home inthe same way as men. This represents around 5% of the world’s women in theworkforce, according to World Bank sex-disaggregated population estimates. Of theregions, the majority (10) of these countries are in the Middle East and North Africa,
but they are scattered almost equally across income levels.
These legal barriers have a direct impact on women’s participation in
entrepreneurship. Egypt is one country in which women are prevented from moving
outside their home in the same way as men. The law governing this restrictedmobility allows male members of a family to prevent women from travellingregardless of work or the travelling arrangements.109 This law has recently been
criticized by the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights.110

108 Ana Revenga and Meaghan Dooley, “What Works for Women Microentrepreneurs?”

Brookings, September 16, 2020.
109 See the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law Index. See also: Dina Abdel-

Fattah, The Constrained Mobility and Economic Activity of Egyptian Women, Egyptian
Centre for Economic Studies, August 2020.
110 “New Draft Personal Status Law Sparks Outrage in Egypt,” Egyptian Streets,
February 27, 2021

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This case is a particularly illustrative example of women’s inability to participate inentrepreneurship. From a high starting point, with women perceiving opportunities
at the same rate as men, participation in Egypt quickly declines such that the ratio
between women and men engaging in early stage entrepreneurial activity is just
30% (see Figure 32). Of course, legal restrictions on women’s mobility are not the
only driver of this trend. However, comparison with income-level peers shows thatthe decline in Egypt is notable: in other middle-income countries, most of which do
not limit mobility, women’s involvement in early-stage entrepreneurial activity stands
at over 80% that of men.
Figure 32. Egypt: Pipeline of Women Entrepreneurs as a Percentage of Male Engagement with
Entrepreneurship
Egypt
Middle income

Ratio of Women to Men
Engaged at Each Stage of
Entrepreneurship

1.2
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
Opportunity
perceptions

Start-up
intentions

Nascent
activity

Early-stage
business

Establishedbusiness

Source: GEM 2020/21

The situation is marginally better when it comes to movements outside the country:
only 4% of countries restrict women’s ability to move around internationally beyond
any restrictions imposed on men. These countries are scattered equally across thefour income levels. However, in 34 countries, women are not able to choose whereto live in the same way that men are. Here, the majority are low- and middle-income
countries with only six high-income countries restricting women’s choice of where tolive in this way.
Practical considerations limit women’s
mobility, alongside legal restrictions

Even where laws do not constrain women’s mobility, social norms and practicalconsiderations still do. Social norms say that women should be at home andaccording to the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women’s survey of low- and middleincome countries, the most commonly reported stereotype was that women should
concentrate on motherhood and domestic work.111 At the practical level, women are
constrained from leaving the house due to their disproportionate domestic workburden. Their caring duties often require women to be at home, interfering with theirability to work at the times that would be most helpful for their customers or at thetimes most needed for their business.112 Further, studies on West Africa andMadagascar show that women entrepreneurs are more likely to run their businesses
from home where domestic duties directly interfere with the time they can spend
running their business.113

111 Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, Gender Stereotypes and Their Impact on

Women Entrepreneurs, November 2021.
112 World Bank, Profiting from Parity: Unlocking the Potential of Women’s Businesses inAfrica, 2019.
113 See pg. 3 in Jesica Torres et al., The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women-

Led Businesses, World Bank, Policy Research Working Paper 9817, October 2021.

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Similarly, concern for their safety further limits women’s mobility at the practicallevel: a report by the International Center for Research on Women notes that inemerging economies, women entrepreneurs suffer more from corruption and thisconstitutes a significant barrier to growing and improving the profitability of theirbusinesses.114

An Interview with Angeli Arora
Given your expertise on law and governance, can you start by telling us a bit
about the legal barriers that women entrepreneurs face around the world?
Many barriers for women entrepreneurs stem from harmful behaviors and attitudes
towards women more generally in society, which amongst other things create an unlevel playing field for them in business. Every jurisdiction is at a different stage ofthe journey when it comes to women’s empowerment and this is often reflected in
the laws of that jurisdiction.
For example, the Central African Republic only gave women the right to vote in1986; in Kuwait, this was as late as 2005. According to the World Bank report
Women, Business and the Law 2022, women cannot undertake the following in thesame way or on an equal basis as men:

Angeli Arora
Partner
Mishcon de Reya LLP–

Inherit equally as daughters in 42 countries–

Apply for a passport in 31 countries–

Inherit equally as a spouse in 43 countries–

Be head of household or family in 28 countries–

Travel outside their home in 14 countries–

Register a business in seven countries–

Open a bank account in six countries

According to the same report, almost 2.4 billion women of working age worldwide
still do not have the same economic rights as men and, on average, women havejust three quarters of the economic rights that men have.
All of these laws first and foremost represent barriers faced by women as women,
which hinder every aspect of their lives — including women entrepreneurship.
Even in jurisdictions where the laws treat men and women as equal on the face of it,
the laws need to go further than that and punish harmful behaviors against women,
including those that hinder their progress. By way of illustration, according to theWorld Bank 2022 report, 46 economies still have no laws on sexual harassment in
the workplace.
What is required from a legal standpoint to better support gender-smart
investments? How does this differ across regions?

114 International Center for Research on Women, Women’s Enterprises: Corruption andCrime, October 2019.

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In some cases, existing laws need to be reversed, including those discussed earlier,to create gender equality. However, this is just the starting point: each jurisdiction
has to do a systematic analysis of what the barriers for women entrepreneurs are inthat place, what calls for action are required to address those barriers, and whatlaws/regulatory changes are required to achieve or effect the calls for action.
These legal changes need to address short-term, medium-term and long-termgoals. For example, in the short term, governments and regulators need to requirebusinesses (including in the investment community) to be more transparent about
their own gender equality performance, as well as in their underlying investments
including reporting on issues like the percentage of women at each level of the firm
and gender pay discrepancies. With more transparency, through enhanced
reporting obligations, the business community can better assess the extent of theissue and appropriate solutions.
In the medium to long term, we need a significant shift away from harmful social
norms and stereotypes that limit expectations of what women in business can do.
For example, the societal norm that women are the primary carer of dependants
creates a negative perception about their ability as an entrepreneur; accordingly, as
an example, laws need to promote “shared parental leave” that look to challenge
the underlying societal norm, as opposed to laws which only give women maternity
leave.
As well as regulatory/legal changes specifically targeted at gender equality, I see
investors using the legal tools available to them as shareholders to promote better
environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance in investees. A numberof shareholders have already put forward environmental-related resolutions atannual general meetings (AGMs) of listed companies and I believe we will see moresocial/governance related resolutions in the near future (including gender anddiversity performance related resolutions). This all contributes to a more conductive
environment for gender-smart investments.
What has been your experience as a woman in the private equity space? Do
you think your experience has been colored by your gender?
When I started my career over 20 years ago, I was often the only female at a
meeting. Rightly or wrongly, I didn’t even think about that — at that point in time, all I
cared about was doing the best for my client. And when I think about the otherfemales around me — the truth is they were so amazing at their job that businesses
realized they just could not afford to lose this talent. So, the number of women in
leadership roles in the private equity industry began to increase, but we still have along way to go. Unfortunately, the balancing of intense hours and tight deadlines inprivate equity with often being the primary carer of dependants is not easy. Thatsaid, with a bit of creative and progressive thinking, these issues can be solved. For
example, flexible/agile working has been very effective during the pandemic and I
hope we can learn some lessons from that.
Also, the women in our industry are really supportive of each other and committed
to achieving gender equality. As someone who has lived in a number ofjurisdictions, it is particularly heartening to see a “global sisterhood” forming —where we look to learn from and support each other on a global, not just local, level— which is, of course, more powerful. I think this comes from an acknowledgmentthat the underlying issues facing women are similar across the globe, albeit that weare at different stages of progress in different places.

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Women Lack Full Access to National and International
Markets
Women entrepreneurs export less,
especially in high-income countries

Women entrepreneurs are less likely to export more than 25% of their production
than their male peers. At the global level, women are just over half as likely toexport at this level compared with men. This seems to be a particular barrier in highincome countries, if we consider women’s export levels relative to that of their malepeers. However, entrepreneurs in lower-income countries of all genders struggle toaccess export markets — in some sense, the barrier does not seem less significant
in low-income countries, it is simply more likely to affect men entrepreneurs as well.
Figure 34. Women Predominantly Sell to Local Markets with More
Limited Access to International Markets

12

100%

% of Entrepreneurs Primarily
Utilizing Each Market

Percentage Reporting Exports of >25% of
Products or Services

Figure 33. There is an Export Gap Across All Income Levels

10
8
6
4
2

13.8

90%

18.9

80%
70%

36

60%

43

International Market

50%

National Market

40%

Local Market

30%
47.7

20%

35.7

10%
0
Low income
Middle income% TEA Women% TEA Men

Source: GEM 2020/21

High income0%% TEA Women% TEA Men

Source: GEM 2020/21

Women-led businesses are more likely tofocus on the local market

Similarly, at the global level, women entrepreneurs have less access to bothnational and international markets than their male peers (see Figure 34). There is
only one outlier: Central and East Asia, where women are fractionally more likely
than men to access international markets. Here, 10.7% of women entrepreneurs
access international markets compared with 10% of men. This is a small gap, but
the absolute numbers are also relatively low: in Europe and North America, 25%
and 32% of women and men, respectively, focus on the international market. Acrossdeveloped and emerging economies, women struggle to access markets in thesame ways that men do — in part driven by their reduced mobility.

Women-led businesses areunderrepresented in the global supply chain

Arising from this gap, less than 1% of government and large corporate spend goes
to women-led businesses.115 This figure is striking and the source seems older than
the rest of the data on women entrepreneurs. In conversation with experts, we haveheard that things have improved, but the situation remains stark. To set this figure incontext, even at the World Bank, just 4.5% of annual procurement spend wasallocated to women-led SMEs in 2020. Their target is 7% by 2023.116 Somecountries have introduced targets for their government tenders.

115 Elizabeth A. Vasquez and Andrew J. Sherman, Buying for Impact: How to Buy from

Women and Change Our World (Advantage Media Group, February 2013).
116 Nora Elizabeth M.C. McGann and Nazaneen Ismail Ali, “Mainstreaming Gender in

Public Procurement,” World Bank Blogs, April 28, 2021.

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For example, the U.S. targets allocating 5% of federal spend to women-owned
enterprises while Kenya reserves 30% of procurement spending for women-owned
and youth-owned businesses, as well as those owned by disabled people.117 There
are many possible explanations for the underrepresentation of women-led
businesses among suppliers: we saw above that reduced mobility plays a part.
Another explanation may be the disproportionate informality of women-led
businesses: the ILO briefing on formalization notes that one benefit to formalizing is
the ability to act as a supplier or retailer of larger companies.118 A third explanation
may be due to the ways suppliers are chosen or how access to tender processes
works — processes can be insufficiently transparent or only communicated throughnetworks of entrepreneurs, to which women may not have access.

Women Entrepreneurs Lack Access to Networks
Women entrepreneurs lack access to
networks and the opportunities andmentoring they often bring

Women globally are less likely to report personally knowing another entrepreneur
than their male peers.119 In lower-income countries, women are more likely to know
an entrepreneur in absolute terms but, compared with their male peers, there is alarger gap. In high-income countries, women report knowing an entrepreneur at
90% the rate of men while in low-income countries the figure is 80%. While
networks might be more lacking in high-income countries across genders, in lowincome countries gender in particular seems to impact the network that
entrepreneurs build.
The consequences of this are wide-ranging: Networks are repositories of information making them a center of learning for

emerging entrepreneurs.
 Opportunities often travel through networks before settling with the entrepreneur

most suited for them — including funding opportunities and procurement
contracts.
 Networks facilitate informal mentoring, which has been shown to level the playing

field in the perception of opportunities and the confidence to realize that
opportunity.120
And none of this addresses the potential psychological difficulties of working entirely
independently without a support network and the second-degree impact this has on
both the ability and motivation to grow an enterprise.
Many women entrepreneurs told us there has been significant progress on womenfounders’ access to networks and this continues to grow. However, the progress
varies between regions: one woman entrepreneur, with experience in both Canada
and Pakistan, told us that while networks have started to open up at the global level,in her current context of Pakistan there was still much more to be done. The
network gap may be more prevalent in emerging markets or those with less wellestablished infrastructure for entrepreneurship.

117 UN Women and the International Labour Organization, Rethinking Gender-

Responsive Procurement: Enabling an Ecosystem for Women’s Economic
Empowerment, 2021.
118 International Labour Organization, Enterprise Formalization, January 2017.
119 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Women’s Entrepreneurship 2020/21 Thriving
Through Crisis, November 2021.
120 Joanna Mills, Shima Barakat, and Shailendra Vyakarnam, Impact of Mentoring andPeer-Learning Within a Global Entrepreneurship Program, 2012.

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The value of networks was also a central topic of discussion for the women
entrepreneurs we met with: many suggested that networks and mentoring were vitalin growing the women entrepreneurs of the future. In particular, they noted the needfor positive role models.
However, other entrepreneurs stressed that while networks and mentoring are
valuable, they alone are not enough, especially when networks are not a route into
securing financing for a business or are comprised only of new entrepreneurs
without experienced mentors. There are two kinds of networks: support networks ofother women are valuable and often provide a place to be vulnerable, but women
entrepreneurs must also be integrated into networks that include men entrepreneurs
and investors, where opportunities are often to be found. Michelle Beyo, Founderand CEO of FINAVATOR, emphasized the need to integrate women into networks
with men, adding that, “there are incredible women’s networks around the world,allowing women to shine, learn from each other, and drive growth. It is time to invite
more men to the event to allow them to see the expertise, the passion, and thefounders’ visions so they can partner, and or invest in a more diverse future!”
Another woman entrepreneur based in Brazil echoed this sentiment noting thatwhile networks of women have opened up, there has been less progress on
including women in the kind of network that could bring opportunities to do businesswith men. While women entrepreneurs may have greater access to networks thanthey once did, they still face barriers to accessing particular kinds of network.

Lack of Education in Business and Digital Skills Pose a
Challenge for Women
We saw in Chapter 1 that in low-income countries women entrepreneurs hadreceived less education than their male peers, while in high-income countries it wasat the higher levels of education that women were closest to parity of engagement
in entrepreneurship. Part of this may be a function of the education distribution
across the population: high-income populations have often received moreeducation, and hence it is to be expected that these countries have more
entrepreneurs with more education. However, this does not explain the gendergaps.
 In low-income countries, women who have received only some secondary

education are more likely to become entrepreneurs than their male peers. By
virtue of this reduced level of education, they are likely to have training needs —either in practical skills for their sector or in general business skills.
 In high-income countries, by contrast, women with less education may feel they

are unable to start a business because they do not have the required skills.
Improving the representation of less-educated women might require a similar
provision of business skills training.
Two skills gaps among women
entrepreneurs: business and digital© 2022 Citigroup

Indeed, women-led businesses in emerging economies report improving businessperformance after basic business skills training around management, accounting,and record-keeping, which in turn both allow them to run more efficient businesses
and to make them more likely to access financing. A review of one training programin Nicaragua, which focused on “production techniques, business organization, andadministrative skills,” saw a significant increase in the incomes of self-employed
men and women. But there was a greater increase for women, indicating that askills gap in part explains the different performance of women- and men-led
businesses.

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The amount of education women entrepreneurs have received is one thing, theusefulness of it for business is another. Women are missing from higher-margin
sectors like Information & Communications Technology (ICT) and Business
Services (P.X) in part because they are missing from the pipeline of students
studying relevant subjects.
While the lack of women studying these subjects is well documented globally, there
is a more acute problem in emerging markets. The digital skills that could take
women into the ICT sector are increasingly vital to run efficient, profitablebusinesses in any sector. Yet women in low- and middle-income countries
disproportionately struggle to access digital tools and hence they come to lackthese skills. The most recent GSMA report shows a 7% gap in access to a mobile
phone in low- and middle-income countries and a 15% gap in mobile internet use.
While the former gender gap has been reversed in some regions (e.g., Europe andCentral Asia) and brought very close to parity in others (e.g., East Asia and Pacific),
the latter gap can be found in all regions.121 Allison et al. (2021) find that womenacross the 130 mainly developing economies in their study are less likely to use
technologies to manage their business, including being less likely to use the internet
for purchases and deliveries or to have business email, internet, and phone
subscriptions.122
Anecdotally, the female founder of one company working to digitize businessmodels in Africa confirmed that women often require more training to use the digital
tools that her business brings to their communities because they aredisproportionately excluded from access to mobile phones, so many had neverused one before. Due to this lack of access, there is a need to train women as bothconsumers of technology — using it to facilitate retail businesses — and as thecreators of tomorrow’s technology — as entrepreneurs in the ICT and Business
Services sectors.
The pandemic catalyzed uptake of digitalsolutionsHowever, the pandemic brought a rare silver lining for women entrepreneurs: therapid transition to remote operations improved their use of digital technologies
across developed and emerging economies. The acceleration of this transitionmeans that more women are using digital tools in 2022 than were forecast to under
pre-pandemic models.
Women entrepreneurs told us there was a much greater willingness to look at digital
tools coming out of the pandemic. Anushka Ratnayake, the founder of myAgro,noted in an interview that the pandemic led to a deployment of call centers, which
they have found to be a more effective way to communicate with farmers, and is
helping the business to scale in a leaner way (see page 68). Moreover, with digital
adoption accelerating at the personal level as well as at the business level, moregirls and young women might pick up the skills and interests that could lead them tostarting and running tech-enabled businesses.

Key considerations for training intervention
designWhile training in basic business and digital skills can deliver significant returns for
women, the delivery of these interventions must keep certain things in mind:

121 GSMA, Connected Women: The Mobile Gender Gap Report 2021, 2021.
122 Lee Allison et al., Gender and Firm Performance around the World: The Roles ofFinance, Technology, and Labor, SSRN, January 12, 2021.

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 Education and training interventions must be precisely targeted to provide

the necessary skills to the women that need them. It is reductive to think of sometraining interventions as suitable for emerging markets and others for developed
markets; there are talented women in emerging markets creating the technologyof the future. We have heard some women business owners express concernsthat they are offered misguided interventions based on their profile as women in
emerging economies. Likewise, there are women in developed markets who bothneed and struggle to access more elementary training.
 Training must fit around women entrepreneurs’ time constraints and theother barriers they face, including the caring and domestic responsibilities theyoften have. The price of overlooking this is often that women will not be able tocomplete the program of training designed to help them.

Women Entrepreneurs and the “Second Shift”
Women face a disproportionate domestic
work burden, which the pandemic only
augmented

We cannot consider the barriers women entrepreneurs face in operating andgrowing their businesses without their experience as women. Women face asignificant domestic work burden, sometimes known as the “second shift.”Entrepreneurs are no more immune from this than employed women. Courtney
Leimkuhler, Founding Partner of Springbank Collective, told us, “A key factor in why
women don't start and run bigger businesses is that women do the vast majority of
unpaid care work. If both men and women — all families — had better access tocare infrastructure that would meaningfully free up the capacity of women andimpact their ability to start and run bigger businesses."
Indeed, data shows that women entrepreneurs tend to spend fewer hours working
on their businesses due to caring and other domestic responsibilities. One study ofAfrican entrepreneurs found that men spend 10% more time working on theirbusiness than women.123 Moreover, in some countries, the gap increased for
married men and women; married men benefited from a spouse taking on moredomestic labor, but married women were further disadvantaged compared with theirunmarried counterparts.
The pandemic augmented this trend. Research from UN Women across different
regions and income levels showed that women added an average of 5.2 hours to
the time spent on unpaid care during the pandemic, while men only added 3.5hours.124 Partly as a result of the “second shift,” women-led businesses closed for
longer during the pandemic. One survey found that, at the global level, womenowned businesses were seven percentage points more likely to be closed.125 WorldBank data on low- and middle-income countries shows that in 12 of the 18 countries
surveyed, businesses with a female top manager were more likely to close due tothe pandemic and were more likely to remain closed six weeks after the peak of thecrisis.126

123 World Bank, Profiting from Parity: Unlocking the Potential of Women’s Businesses inAfrica, 2019.
124 UN Women, Whose Time to Care: Unpaid Care and Domestic Work During COVID-

19, November 25, 2020.
125 Carmen de Paz Nieves, Isis Gaddis, and Miriam Muller, Gender and COVID-19: What

Have We Learnt, One Year Later? World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 9709,
2021.
126 Ibid. The 18 countries surveyed were: Guinea, Mozambique, Niger, Mongolia,
Morocco, Lebanon, Jordan, Nicaragua, Honduras, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania,
Moldova, North Macedonia, Romania, Slovenia and the Slovak Republic.

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While this varied by enterprise size and sector, a gender gap persisted whencontrolling for these factors, indicating gendered impacts not explained by the kindof businesses women entrepreneurs tend to run. A significant candidate for the
explaining feature here is the disproportionate care burden that women experienced
during the pandemic. However, this is just a candidate explanation; a full account of
the pandemic and its impacts is yet to emerge.
Figure 35. Average Predicted Profitability That the Business Is Open or Partially Open Six
Weeks or More After the Peak of the Crisis
Other Sectors
Other Services *Hospitality *Retail and Wholesale
Manufacturing *Medium and Large *Small
Micro *
60

70

80

90

100

Probability of Being Open or Partially Open 6 Weeks
After the Peak of the Crisis
Men-led businesses

Women-led businesses

Note: This data collates businesses that were open and partially open into the same statistic. Many women
entrepreneurs faced an increased care burden during the pandemic, which might have pushed them into the “open”
category of this data set, despite being only partially open due to gendered challenges. (*) indicates statisticallysignificant gender gap.
Source: Torres et al. 2021
The impact of domestic work on the next
generation of women entrepreneurs

The increased “second shift” did not only affect existing women entrepreneurs. The
pipeline of women entrepreneurs was narrowed by the pandemic: girls were more
likely to help with housework and caring for their siblings or elderly relatives thantheir brothers.127 This took time away from their education, meaning that anothergeneration of entrepreneurs will be less skilled when they start their businesses
than the men who were not tasked with domestic work. Similarly, absence fromschool is expected to have led to an increased chance of pregnancy.128 The impactof the pandemic on women entrepreneurs will echo through a generation.

127 UN Women, Whose Time to Care: Unpaid Care and Domestic Work During COVID-

19, November 25, 2020.
128 Amy Copley et al., COVID-19 Pandemic Through a Gender Lens, World Bank, Africa

Knowledge in Time Policy Brief, June 2020.

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An Interview with Michelle Kennedy, Founder & CEO of
PeanutThank you for agreeing to speak with us, Michelle. Can you tell us a bit about
Peanut and what motivated you to start the business?
Peanut is an app and a platform for women to connect across life stages — whether
that is going through fertility treatment, pregnancy, motherhood, perimenopause, or
post-menopase. It is about enabling women to find other women at a similar life
stage to ask questions, find relevant content, and find support in a light-hearted, funway. Nothing is taboo on Peanut and you can ask anything.

Michelle Kennedy
Founder & CEO
PeanutMichelle Kennedy is founder and CEO of
Peanut, one of the fastest-growing social
networking apps for women focusing on
fertility, pregnancy, motherhood andmenopause, which has raised $23 million todate. Michelle was formerly Deputy CEO of
dating behemoth Badoo, and during her
tenure was integral to and an inauguralboard member of Bumble, (which IPO’ed
last year at a $13 billion valuation). Having
worked in social discovery for ten years,
Michelle has unprecedented experience andunderstanding of the safety and growthcomponents of building a social network for
women, and continues to execute on her
mission to make Peanut the leading network
to connect women when they need eachother most. She is also a strategic investor
in several early and late stage startups, andinstitutional venture capital funds

I'd been working in the dating industry, making products to connect peopleromantically but I wasn't at that life stage myself, and I saw this huge opportunity tobring together the products that were out there, which were either old-school forums
or an overwhelmingly large amount of content. How do you know which information
to trust? How do you know what to read? How can you find other women who weregoing through the same thing, if you are not completely in sync with your bestfriends? Or even if you don't have that support network or wouldn't want to share,
how do you find that connectivity? I wanted to tackle subjects that had been
considered taboo and let women know there's nothing shameful or awkward about
those conversations. You can always talk about them on Peanut and there will beother women who are there.
A 2020 Vanity Fair article about you describes you as the ultimate “mompreneur.” How has motherhood impacted your role as an entrepreneur?
But for motherhood, I wouldn't be doing what I am. I was working in a completely
different environment leading someone else's company. I had been involved increating new products, but founding my business came from a moment ofmotherhood and a moment of feeling like I wouldn't want another woman to have togo through what I had when we could build something better. The women coming
behind me have greater expectations: they're utilizing technology and great userinterface (UI) in their everyday lives, and yet, when it comes to motherhood, they
get a forum or 20 pages of content from 2002. That felt very jarring. When you go
through these seismic life moments, your identity is challenged. It's isolating andlonely, but having a platform where you can find other people who have lived thatexperience makes you realize you are not the only person going through this.
Motherhood had other impacts on entrepreneurship, too. I want my children to feellike they can do and try anything, and to see that I've done it and tried. I want themto know that it's a constant grind, and yet, when you're doing something thatchanges people's lives for the better, it's worth it.
What have been the biggest challenges that you faced as a woman
entrepreneur? Do you think they've been gender-related in any way?
There are unquestionably key moments on Peanut’s journey that have been related
to gender, who I am, and the position I have. That goes right from the start of
Peanut when I had everything ready to go, and I was told I wouldn’t raise capital
without a male co-founder, right through to people asking whether I have enoughtime to commit to a business since I have a family. I'm pretty sure no male founder
has ever been asked the same question! These are individual moments, but they
chip at you and a voice inside starts to echo the sentiments. Then, you start toquestion whether you should fly to the U.S. and miss your kid’s play.

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Societal expectations are that I would never miss my son's concert. Let alone thefact that my husband may never have been to one — I would never miss it. This is adrumbeat that we must change.
I did a fund raise while pregnant with my second child, and I did everything I could
to hide that pregnancy. Thinking about what my platform does, it’s ironic that I would
hide the bump, but I did. I was at one of the final meetings for the fund raise, andone of my friends, another founder, commented while I was with an investor that I
didn’t look pregnant in that outfit. Of course, that was the point! We both paused inhorror at the thought that an investor might find out that I was pregnant during afund raise — and that’s terrible. This isn’t an isolated incident. I was introduced only
a few months ago to another founder about to fundraise while pregnant and she
wanted advice. The fact that we are still having this conversation is deeply
problematic. Women have lives. Some of us have babies, some of us don't. That's
okay. It's not impactful whether we can run a successful company or not. Someyoung women are also asked at pitches whether they're married or what theirdomestic situation is. This is very common and it must stop.
Are the investors you engage with mostly male, and do you think just having
more female investors will actually help women entrepreneurs?
I have men and women investors in Peanut, and the men are really important. We
have to bring men on the journey too. Women can't do this alone. The challenge is if
you have so few women who are able to write checks or who sit on the investmentcommittee, it is irrelevant how many women you have at the associate and principal
level. I recently spoke to a fund pitching for an investment from me. I was pushingthem on how many women founders they have backed, and it was minuscule. They
had a 50/50 gender split in their partnership, but the investment committee is threemen. That's part of the issue. We need women at all stages of the investment
process with check writing ability. It can't just be that women are responsible forgetting the deals in and then blocked further up the line.
If you don't have more women at all stages, the women become known as the“women's company” person. And that woman mightn’t want that: she might beinterested in an industry that is not related to women. Don't just send opportunities
to her because she's the only woman in the partnership, for example. This is
reductive for both women founders and women investors. If you have women
everywhere, then you're not just going to send it to one woman and men will start
looking too. You have to have really good diversity at all stages, so that you don't
have the token woman who looks at anything that's remotely related to womanhood.
How can the financial community better support women entrepreneurs likeyourself?
First, look at your pipeline. Keep looking at your pipeline, and questioning why you
are looking at those companies. Do you have the right starting point? Because if
you're looking at an opportunity because that's so-and-so who you went to school
with, that's not the right starting point. I didn't go to school with any of those people,
and I can guarantee you many of the women, and other underrepresented founders,
didn't have those same opportunities. You have to scrap it, and start again. If I canmake, say, 12 investments in a year and 10 are in women founders, funds with
infinitely more resources and time can do it. There are businesses out there.

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Second, I've heard it said so many times that male founders will “figure it out.” I've
never heard that said about female founders. Male founders get the benefit of the
doubt; women founders are told they are not clear enough on the path forward. It ishugely detrimental that women are never given the benefit of the doubt. Women are
incredibly resourceful and we already know that women founders perform better. It
will pay off, but you have to give women the benefit of the doubt.

An Interview with Anushka Ratnayake, CEO of myAgro
Thank you for agreeing to speak with us, Anushka. What were the biggest
challenges you’ve faced as an entrepreneur? Do you think they were genderrelated?
There are two challenges that immediately come to mind — fundraising and getting
buy-in on an untested and new idea. For fundraising, during myAgro’s first year
there was a coup d'état in Mali and then a couple years later there was a second
coup and military intervention. In the eyes of our donors, we were a neworganization operating in what seemed to be a risky environment. I didn’t anticipate
how much time I would need to spend on fundraising. I really had to help donors
understand the context and keep them informed as the situation evolved to assure
them of our stability. This in turn fostered their trust and commitment to myAgro.
They became a great force to expand our network and accelerate our growth.

Anushka Ratnayake
CEO
myAgroAnushka is the Founder and CEO of
myAgro. She has worked in rural Africa
since mid-2008, helping to increase foodsecurity and market access for small-scale
farmers. Prior to starting myAgro, shedeveloped key components of One Acre
Fund’s core operation model, createdmanagement-training programs, andtraveled across Africa and South Asia insearch of innovations in the microfinanceand agricultural sectors. Before joining One
Acre Fund, Anushka was an early employee
of Kiva.org and created the Kiva Fellows
Program. Anushka received her BA in
Literature from University of California,
Santa Cruz and her agricultural training fromsmallholder farmers in Bungoma, Kenya.
Anushka is a 2018 winner of the Skoll Award
for Social Entrepreneurship, a 2018 Young
Global Leader of the World Economic
Forum, a 2011–13 Rainer Arnhold Fellow, a2013 DRK Foundation Social
Entrepreneurship Fellow, and a 2012
Echoing Green Fellow.

© 2022 Citigroup

Second, the concept that smallholder farmers can save was an untested andunknown idea in myAgro’s earlier days. We had to gain farmers' buy-in by asking
them to take a leap of faith with us to trust that this was both secure and beneficial
to their families. Working in an agricultural space, the first year, I think my all maleteam who were agronomists definitely doubted my experience as someone focusedon financial inclusion. I hired more women and developed an internship program ofyounger agronomists who were more open to new ideas. As soon as our farmers
harvested, any doubt disappeared.
I have grown in being more confident in asking for financial support from donors or
through financing. I am comfortable asking for larger financing that helps us planahead and build our systems so we can reach our North Star of serving 1 million
farmers by 2026.
How has the pandemic impacted your business and how have you
responded?
The pandemic became an opportunity for our team to quickly innovate solutions toincrease our support to farmers. In one of our operating countries, there was acomplete lockdown that led to the closure of local markets. These markets arewhere our farmers would go to sell their harvests. This is their primary source ofincome.
Since we rely on farmers to pay for their inputs, we needed to think creatively about
how we could make inputs more affordable. Our solution was to develop smaller
packages for farmers to purchase that were focused on products that would
increase incomes relatively quickly, such as vegetables. We lowered our initial
targets knowing we wouldn’t be able to reach our stretch goal for the year, but wewere still able to grow by 40%!

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We also used the pandemic to make a number of technology investments. We wereable to accelerate concepts in the R&D phase to launch much faster than initiallyplanned. We went from 0% of our farmers paying through Mobile Money, to 30% injust one month utilizing one of these systems.
We expanded our call center, which in turn increased farmers’ yields and our sales.
While we were limited by COVID-19 and the expense of physical visits to farmers,
we found our call center agents could make multiple low-cost calls to farmers during
the planting season to check on a farmer’s progress, teach them something new, or
answer questions. Having this frequent contact resulted in larger harvests for the
farmers because they were receiving more ongoing support.
Do you work differently with female clients versus male clients?
We believe it is critical to take the time to understand the barriers and motivators for
women farmers in order to cater our sales, products, and training to best servethem. It starts with how we approach them. In Mali, for example, we have meetings
with women separate from their husbands and we provide packages that cater towhat women like to plant. We also design our training to account for how they preferto learn and to help them overcome potential issues they may face.
For example, one barrier in farming is that women generally have less upper bodystrength than men. To solve this, myAgro researched if farmers could dig seedholes that were shallower, compared to the scientifically recommended depth. We
found that they could without affecting yields, making it physically easier for women
to utilize the fertilizer microdosing technique that has been proven to increase
yields.
We also looked at what products women prefer to produce. Sorghum, for example,
is a traditional cereal grown in the area and we had sourced a new sorghum variety
that was climate-smart and effective in producing high yields. Seed companies andresearchers found that only male farmers were investing in sorghum. myAgro
performed a gender-based study to understand why women grow sorghum. We
asked what is most important to them and how that affects their farming decisions.
We learned they were most concerned about nutrition and feeding their children ahealthy porridge. So, we changed our market approach of how we sold sorghum tofocus on feeding children and families a healthy, nutritious porridge. We saw great
success, with mothers sharing both sorghum stories and recipes. Our marketingthen included the photos of their children eating porridge, surrounded by their proud
mothers. Female farmers now make up a large portion of our sorghum farmers todate.
Is digital the solution to helping small holder farmers or is more needed?
Digital is definitely part of the solution to helping smallholder farmers! What farmers
ultimately need is financial access and inclusion. myAgro provides farmers with asafe place to save, access to inputs, and technical training. myAgro’s technology
enables us to market, train, and collect payments to significantly more farmers
because we can reach farmers in even very remote rural areas via mobile phones.
Using technology helps us lower the cost overall for the farmer.
While we rely on digital solutions, we never lose sight that our farmers are growing
tangible things so they need tangible inputs. They need market access, which often
includes moving physical inputs (e.g., seeds and fertilizer) to their farms and then,food from their farm to the market, so we also maintain a strong supply and value
chain to offer farmers a complete solution.

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How can the financial community better support women entrepreneurs likeyourself as well as your female clients?
Asking the question is a great first step! Like any activity, the financial community
can look at their funnel — how many deals are coming in from women and whatpercent are being converted to first identify what problem you’re solving for.
What I found has helped me most is the credibility of some early awards that
focused on introducing me to new investors or donors. Having access to different
financial products for different stages of organizational growth plays a key role insuccess along with training for new entrepreneurs. To get to the next stages ofgrowth, entrepreneurs need others to open doors to larger rounds of financing,different types of financing, and varied lenders or donors. An emphasis on building acommunity, spotlighting your entrepreneurs, and supporting entrepreneurs to thenext level is just as important as being responsive in the moment. That is how true
scale and growth is going to happen!

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Accessing the Untapped Potential of
Women Entrepreneurs“We are at an inflection point, whereby the
number of women starting and scaling VCbackable businesses is increasing year-onyear, but traditional investors often overlook
these innovative solutions being developedin untapped market segments. We have to
make more noise about the opportunity
women entrepreneurs present, and by doing
so will bring more investors to the table.”– Triin Linamagi and Nicole Velho, Sie
Ventures

Starting and growing a business is no easy task for men or women but, as theprevious chapters have demonstrated, women entrepreneurs around the world facea unique set of gender-related barriers and constraints in addition to thosechallenges facing small businesses more broadly. These include lack of access tofinance, markets, training, and networks as well as legal constraints and social
norms around gender roles. We acknowledge that women entrepreneurs are not ahomogenous group and experiences vary, but overall, women entrepreneurs doface more obstacles and challenges than their male counterparts.
It is now well understood that when women are given greater opportunity toparticipate in the labor force, economies grow and societies prosper. For example,
we argued in our Citi GPS report Women in the Economy II report that reducing
gender inequalities in the workplace could add around 6% to GDP in advanced
economies over the course of one to two decades.129 The International Monetary
Fund (IMF) has also found the economic gains from reducing barriers to women’s
participation in the labor force not only comes from adding more workers, but there
is an additional benefit to growth from the positive effect of gender diversity on
productivity. However, the role of women entrepreneurs more specifically hasreceived less attention. In this chapter, we explore the opportunities arising fromfinancing, supporting, and promoting women entrepreneurship.
We start by presenting a piece of original analysis that finds achieving gender parity
in business growth could generate between 288 million and 433 million jobs while
increasing global GDP by ~$2 trillion — the equivalent of adding 2%-3% to global
GDP. Our analysis demonstrates that promoting women entrepreneurship andsupporting the growth of women-owned businesses can lead to substantial global
growth and job creation. We then discuss in more detail the role that women
entrepreneurs play in addressing key global issues such as poverty reduction,
climate change, post-COVID-19 recovery, and the UN Sustainable Development
Goals more broadly. We then explore the strong business case for supporting
women entrepreneurs and women-owned businesses from gender-smart
procurement and supply chains to business opportunities for financial institutions.
The chapter concludes with a discussion on the role of investors and how the rise ofenvironmental, social, and governance (ESG), and more specifically gender lensinvesting, as well as trends in wealth are helping to re-shape the investor
ecosystem and create a more level playing field for women entrepreneurs in capitalraising.

129 In addition to Citi’s findings that pursuing gender equality within advanced economies

could lift GDP by 6%, other studies have found that eradicating gender gaps could add
up to 26% to global GDP relative to a “business-as-usual scenario” (McKinsey, 2015),
and closing labor force participation gaps could add 12% to OECD GDP by 2030
(OECD, 2013).

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Achieving Gender Parity in Business Growth Can Unlock
Substantial Global Growth
In Chapter 1, we discussed the current landscape of women entrepreneurship andhighlighted that fewer women than men are entrepreneurs running early-stage
businesses globally. We also stressed that the gap between women’s and men’s
participation gets bigger through the entrepreneurship pipeline, and the trends are
similar across income groups and regions. Women already play a crucial role in the
global economy as entrepreneurs but what if we could unlock the untapped
potential of achieving gender parity in business growth?
Supporting the growth of women-led
businesses significantly contributes to global
growthThere are barriers to growth for women-owned businesses around the world, but
the need to support women entrepreneurs in growing their business is more often
the focus in advanced economies, and receives less attention in low- and middleincome countries. A 2016 study of women entrepreneurs in Kenya found that while
there is a growing phenomenon of women entrepreneurship as a means ofalleviating poverty — which has also led to positive changes in societal norms about
women entrepreneurs — support dries up when women-led businesses look to
grow. It also notes that starting a business is increasingly made possible bymicrofinance, but there remain barriers to growth.130 To help women entrepreneurs
globally reach their full economic potential, support around the world must not stop
once women start businesses, and must extend to helping them grow.
To get a sense of the GDP contribution that can be delivered, we carried out ananalysis using data from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), the World Bank,and the International Labour Organization (ILO) to estimate the potential growthdifferential between businesses led by men and those by women. Looking at 42
countries for which GEM provides data on the rate of entrepreneurship, in almost all
countries,131 there is a gap between the percentage of women entrepreneurs who
employ staff and the percentage of men entrepreneurs. The shaded blue area in
Figure 36 represents that difference, aggregated into a global figure.

130 Rachel Lock and Helen Smith, “The Impact of Female Entrepreneurship on Economic

Growth in Kenya,” International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship, 8, no. 1 (March
2016): 90-96.
131 Excluding Taiwan.

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73

Figure 36. The Growth Gap Between Men’s and Women’s Businesses Can be Understood in
Terms of Job Creation

Percentage of Entrepreneurs Operatingwith X Employees

60
Women

Men

50

40

30

20

10

0
1 to 56 to 1920 +Source: GEM 2020/21

To measure this gap we take the GEM estimate for the percentage of women andmen entrepreneurs active in each country. For each country, we multiply thisnumber by the ILO labor force estimate, split by sex. This gives an estimate of thetotal number of entrepreneurs, by gender, in each of the 42 countries. Call this theentrepreneurial population. We have iterated our analysis using the World Bank
estimate of adults aged 15-64 and it makes little difference which population
estimate is used.
Next, we take the GEM estimates for the percentage of entrepreneurs who (a)operate individually, (b) have 1-5 employees, (c) have 6-19 employees, and (d)have 20+ employees. This is estimated as a percentage of the Total early-stage
Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA), therefore it can be applied to our estimate of theentrepreneurial population to give an estimate of the number of entrepreneurs
operating with each number of employees. We take the median of each interval,i.e., 0, 3, 13, and (to be conservative) 20 and from this we estimate the number ofjobs created by entrepreneurs in each category. Since the GEM input isdisaggregated, we have this figure gender-disaggregated, which tells us how many
more jobs men entrepreneurs create than women.
For example, in Angola, the first country in the GEM 2020/21 data set alphabetically,
men entrepreneurs are more likely to fall into job creation categories b, c, and dthan women. This means that businesses led by men have created almost 3 million
more jobs than those led by women.
Some solo-entrepreneurs would prefer to be
in formal employment© 2022 Citigroup

For our analysis, we discount the number of entrepreneurs who operate without
employees and claim to have entered entrepreneurship due to a scarcity of jobs
from this figure since it is clear from our research that many of those who fall into
this category would prefer to be employed. Hence, we expect that some of the jobs
created by helping women-led businesses to grow at the rate of men’s would create
jobs for these solo-entrepreneurs, indicating a substitution of some economic
activity for other.

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Of course, it may be that these jobs create more economic output than the same
people did as solo-entrepreneurs since (1) solo-entrepreneurs struggle to match thesame efficiency as larger businesses and (b) secure employment might lead togreater spending and consumption by the newly employed. Indeed, some analysis
shows that women in contracted employment see their income decline less relative
to their male peers due to marriage, family size, and an increase in their domestic
work.132 This indicates that moving women from solo entrepreneurship to contracted
employment would not be a like-for-like substitution and would drive increased
economic output. Nonetheless, we discount these solo entrepreneurs from ourestimate and, by doing so, we discount ~12% of the potential jobs created.
We also discount a further 40%-60% of jobs created by women entrepreneurs toadjust for the substitution effect. It is difficult to understand how many jobs createdby women entrepreneurs will be filled by people leaving other jobs or work and thissurely varies depending on region and income level. However, there is likely to besome substitutions of this kind. This is what we mean by the substitution effect: theeconomic impact of leveling the playing field for women entrepreneurs is not strictly
additional to current economic productivity because some of the jobs they create
would be filled by people leaving other work. Therefore, some economic activity is
substituted for other. While this may not be like-for-like substitution and the jobs
created by women entrepreneurs may generate more economic output than thoseworkers’ current jobs, to be conservative, we assume like-for-like substitution of afurther 40%-60% of the jobs created.
Substitution effect of job creation

This leaves us with a total of 50%-70% of the jobs that women entrepreneurs could
create resulting from the substitution of some economic activity for another. A
number of studies lead us to think this is the right range. First, the Rose Review
study on women entrepreneurship in the U.K. discounts 40% of estimated economic
output due to the substitution effect.133 We add this to our baseline of discounting
solo entrepreneurs, resulting in a minimum substitution effect of 50%. Second, aDeloitte study of high growth firms in the U.K., which builds on academic data sets,
estimates 69% of new jobs created by high-growth firms would be offset by lost jobs
from the contraction of other firms.134 It suggests that in emerging economy
scenarios, where interventions have greater additionality, 70% substitution or
displacement is excessive and 50% is more appropriate.135 Hence, we provide a
range: at the more conservative end, we discount 70% of jobs created by women
entrepreneurs as direct substitutions, and at the more ambitious end, we discount50%. We think the latter may be a more appropriate figure for low- and middleincome countries.

132 For example, see Greg Hundley, “Male/Female Earnings Differences in Self-

Employment: The Effects of Marriage, Children, and the Household Division of Labor,”
Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 54, no. 1, (October 2000).
133 The Alison Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship, commissioned by HM
Treasury, 2019.
134 Albert Bravo-Biosca, Firm Growth Dynamics Across Countries: Evidence from a New
Database, Nesta Fora, 2013.
135 Deloitte, The Scale-Up Challenge, November 2014.

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Supporting women entrepreneurs could add
2%-3% to global GDP

For the 42 countries in the data set, this leaves us with between 124 million and 186
million new jobs, which we pro-rate up to the global level using the percentage ofthe population accounted for in the GEM 42 countries as a multiplier, leaving us with
between 288 million and 433 million jobs created globally. If we assume all thesejobs are paid at the prevailing minimum wage in the country in which they werecreated — using the ILO data on the minimum wage — we generate an estimate of
between $888 billion and $1.3 trillion of additional GDP in the countries included in
the GEM data set. This can again be pro-rated up to between $1.6 trillion and $2.3
trillion of additional GDP, based on the percentage of global GDP represented by
GEM. This would be a 2%-3% increase to global GDP.

75

Figure 37. Breakdown of the Jobs Created by Parity of Growth and Employment Rates, by
Income Level
500
450
400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0

Millions

Lower Bound

Upper Bound
67 m
189 m
45 m

160 m
126 m
17 m
11 m
Low income

106 m
Lower-middle
incomeUpper-middle
incomeHigh income

Source: Citi GPS analysis of Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2020/21, World Bank, ILO
Women and men entrepreneurs in lowincome countries require support to growtheir businesses

It is worth noting that in low-income countries, there is a small and medium-sizedenterprise (SME) gap for both men and women. Evidence shows there is an overall
gap in the business size continuum in developing economies with very few SMEs
run by either men or women. This overall gap means that parity between men andwomen here would not create many jobs. Instead, interventions are required to
grow both men-led and women-led microenterprises. However, the fact that we see
a gap here at all indicates that businesses led by women may be a particular target
for these interventions.
There are a number of caveats to this estimate:

Unlocking this level of growth will require
addressing the sectoral imbalance of
women-led businesses Women entrepreneurs are overrepresented in the retail sector, which may not beable to produce the level of employment our estimate indicates. Therefore, fully
realizing the economic potential of women entrepreneurs may require addressing
the sectoral distribution of women-led businesses. While we note that some ofthis might be impossible, given the preferences women might have for retailbusinesses, we nonetheless think addressing the sectoral imbalance would be
independently desirable. Some studies have shown that when women
entrepreneurs “crossover” into sectors dominated by men, they grow theirbusinesses more than women in traditionally female sectors and appear as large
and as profitable as businesses run by men.136

136 Salman Alibhai, Niklas Buehren, and Sreelakshmi Papineni, Female Entrepreneurs

Who Success in Male-Dominated Sectors in Ethiopia, World Bank, Gender Innovation
Lab Policy Brief No. 12, October 2015.

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 There may be solo-entrepreneurs who would not prefer employment and,conversely, entrepreneurs running businesses with employees who would
choose employment if the option were available. Our analysis is reductive in thisregard, but we consider it an accurate enough estimate nonetheless.
 There is a gap earlier in the pipeline of women entrepreneurs, the closing of

which is not accounted for in this estimate even though it could have a significant
economic impact. Women still start businesses at a lower rate than men,
especially in high-income countries, and bringing the rate closer to parity could
further add to global GDP. However, estimates of the economic value of closing
this gap are not strictly additive to our estimate of closing the growth gap.
 Data was a limiting factor, especially for low-income countries. The GEM dataset

we examined (42 countries) is heavily skewed towards high and upper middleincome countries. However, as discussed earlier, research shows that women in
low-income countries encounter even more challenges in sustaining and growing
their business compared to women in higher-income countries.137
 We expect the displacement effect in emerging economies will be significantly

less than in developed economies due to the greater additionality of interventionsin these contexts. Moreover, interventions can be structured to maximize
additionality and minimize the level of displacement or substitution. Removing
almost all of the substitution effect and leaving in place only the substitution ofcurrent solo entrepreneurs into contracted employment could result in a net addof up to $4 trillion to global GDP.
Our estimates are conservative relative to a number of other studies: a 2019analysis from BCG estimates the net add to GDP if women entrepreneurs were
supported would be in the region of $3 trillion to $5 trillion.138 The seminal 2019
Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship found that giving women entrepreneurs
equal access to capital in the U.K. alone could add £250 billion ($326 billion) to theeconomy.139 Of this, £133 billion ($173 billion) comes from closing the growth gap,
making this a more comparable point for our analysis. On this basis, our analysis isextremely conservative: the methodology outlined above on closing the gap inbusiness growth predicts a £42 billion ($55 billion) increase to U.K. GDP. We
recognize there are limitations to the findings, but overall we think they give a senseof scale of what can be achieved by addressing the barriers faced by women

137 Keric Chin, The Power of Procurement: How to Source from Women-Owned

Businesses, UN Women, 2017.
138 Shalini Unnikrishnan and Cherie Blair, “Want to Boost the Global Economy by $5

Trillion? Support Women as Entrepreneurs,” BCG, July 30, 2019.
139 The Alison Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship, commissioned by HM

Treasury, 2019. This Rose Review figure is composed of three parts: the Gross Value
Added to the economy of women-led businesses (£56,000) compared with men-led
businesses (£126,000). Based on the number of women-led businesses, closing thisgrowth gap could create £133 billion. Second, the Review notes that only one in three
entrepreneurs is a woman, indicating there are ~1.1 million missing businesses. If
women had the same new business formation rate as men, this would generate £124
billion. If these new businesses then scaled at the same rate as men-led businesses,
there would be a further add to GDP of £158 billion. This brings the Rose Review’s total
estimate to £415 billion added to U.K. GDP. However, the study notes that becoming
entrepreneurs displaces the economic value that these women would otherwise havegenerated. They estimate this to be £165 billion, leaving a net add to GDP of £250
billion.

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entrepreneurs and unlocking the potential of women entrepreneurship, which istrillions of dollars and hundreds of millions of jobs.
Supporting women-led businesses creates
further social and economic benefits not
captured by this analysis

It is important to recognize that supporting the growth of women-owned businesses
will likely also deliver social and further economic benefits that are difficult tocapture in economic analysis, as women’s economic empowerment can have amultiplier effect across their families and communities. We discuss this in moredetail below, but one key point to highlight is that women-owned or led businesses
generally employ more women employees. A survey of 20 developing economies
carried out by the International Trade Centre found that 40% of firms owned by
women employed a majority of women workers, compared with 22% of firms owned
and operated by men.140 This in itself can lead to a ripple effect and virtuous circle
in further boosting women’s economic empowerment, the benefits of which would
transfer onto their children, affording them more opportunities.

The Missing Middle of SMEs in Low-Income Countries
By Josh Bicknell — Co-Founder and CEO, Balloon Ventures
Two billion people globally work in the informal sector. Most of this work is low paid, insecure, and often unsafe. Womenand youth are disproportionately represented. This is a huge global challenge because insecure low-paid work traps
people in poverty, and unable to invest and plan for the future. A good job is transformational and the benefits ofeconomic development are only unlocked through good jobs. Data shows that a job that is safe, secure, and fairly paid
moves entire families out of poverty.
One of the key reasons there is such a huge informal sector is because emerging markets lack small and medium-sizedenterprises (SMEs) that in more mature economies form the bulk of decent work. This is called “The Missing Middle.”
One way to create more SMEs is to help some of the most entrepreneurial people running small businesses transition,and move from micro to SME.
Figure 38. The Missing Middle

Source: Balloon Ventures

At Balloon Ventures, we focus on a group of local entrepreneurs in East Africa that typically employ 5-20 employees andoperate in very traditional brick and mortar industries: small scale manufacturing, hospitality, education etc. The
investment community often overlooks these entrepreneurs. But this is the group we need to focus on, because theyneed to become the engine of good job creation.
So why are they stuck? Typically, finance is seen as the major barrier. This is true. This size of business often needs$10,000 to $50,000 of investment, which is too big for microfinance and too small for equity investors. And for banks,
these entrepreneurs are often too risky, with informal practices and without the collateral to secure an investment. Thisis especially true for women entrepreneurs who typically have lower-value collateral than men.

140 International Trade Centre, Unlocking Markets for Women to Trade, 2015.

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However, finance isn’t the only reason why these businesses aren’t growing. Evidence points to poor management as
being equally important. The World Management Survey, compiled with 11,000 firms across 34 countries, shows that
adopting better management leads to productivity growth of 30%+.
Therefore, a holistic solution needs to combine investment with highly-efficient and scalable business support. By
combining the two, investors can de-risk an investment by fixing the problems in a business, and then assess abusiness beyond just collateral, instead investing against cash-flow and the performance and potential of the business.
This opens up the opportunity for many more women to access funding. And it makes a currently unviable segment ofbusiness, viable. Balloon Ventures is doing this in Uganda, making over 70 loans in two years to businesses rejected byothers, achieving a 97% repayment rate, and supporting a portfolio of 1,000+ employees who are moving into
contracted, fairly-paid, and safe work.
The opportunity is huge. In Uganda alone we estimate there are 352,000 businesses in this segment employing 5-49
employees, with the potential to create over five million good jobs and absorb $1 billion of investment.
These are businesses like Byeffe Foods, founded by Fatuma in 2014.
Byeffe produces pumpkin flour and porridges sourced from a network of
5,000 youth farmers. Balloon invested $21,000 in late 2020 to fund thepurchase and importation of several large machines to increase capacity
and improve quality. With insufficient collateral, Byeffe had failed to get aloan from the bank. After receiving investment from Balloon Ventures,
Byeffe grew revenue by 66%, improved jobs for 21 existing staff andcreated seven new positions.

There are literally millions of women entrepreneurs across the world like Fatuma that could create billions of good jobs.
The challenge is to create scalable solutions that unlock their potential.

Women Entrepreneurs Are Key to Tackling Global
Challenges
Women Entrepreneurs Unlock the Post-COVID-19 Recovery
Women perceive opportunities forbusinesses as the world emerges from thepandemic…

© 2022 Citigroup

While we saw above that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated many of thebarriers that have long impeded women entrepreneurs, it has also given rise to anumber of opportunities. According to the latest GEM data, across both early-stage
entrepreneurs and those leading established businesses, women in all regions andacross all income levels were at least as likely to perceive an opportunity they wantto pursue arising from the pandemic as their male peers.

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Figure 39. Women Entrepreneurs at the Early State Were at Least as
Likely as Men to Perceive a New Opportunity Arising from thePandemic
At Early Stage Pandemic Provided New Opportunity

Figure 40. Women Entrepreneurs at the Established Business Stage
Were in All Cases More Likely than Men to Perceive a New Opportunity
Arising from the Pandemic
At Established Stage Pandemic Provided New Opportunity

High income

High income

Middle income

Middle income

Low income

Low income

0

10

20

% TEA Men

30

40

50

60

70

80

0

% TEA Women

Source: GEM 2020/21…but they will require support to unlock
those opportunities

79

20% TEA Men

40

60

80

Source: GEM 2020/21

However, while women perceived more opportunities, they were more likely toconsider it more difficult to start a business during the pandemic. At the global level,
66% of early-stage women entrepreneurs considered it more difficult to start abusiness during the pandemic, compared with 61% of men. At the establishedbusiness stage, the gap grows wider — to 71% of women vs. 64% of men. The
same trend persists across regions and income levels.141 Hence, we should temper
any optimism about the rebound of women entrepreneurs out of the pandemic
unless there are systems of support put in place for women. While women
perceived opportunities, they face more difficulties in acting on them than men, andwill require support to turn those opportunities into economic output. Nonetheless,this indicates that if women entrepreneurs are well supported, they could be a vital
force in the global recovery from the pandemic.

141 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Women’s Entrepreneurship 2020/21 Thriving

Through Crisis, November 2021.

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COVID-19 and Entrepreneurs in the Developing World: Supporting Business
Survival and Recovery
Juan Carlos Thomas — Global Entrepreneurship Director, TechnoServe
COVID-19 had swift and severe impacts for entrepreneurs around the world. As the pandemic disrupted supply chainsand generated quarantines, shelter-in-place orders, social distancing, and cascading economic impacts, micro and small
businesses in the Global South (e.g., Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Oceana) struggled to keep their businesses afloat.
The pandemic also deepened the impact of existing threats to women’s economic empowerment, and women
entrepreneurs are more likely to see their assets sold off or businesses shuttered because of their weaker decisionmaking power and the value placed on men’s role as income earners. But as severe as the challenges were,entrepreneurs — equipped with the right tools — showed remarkable resilience and an enormous capacity to adapt todifficult and changing circumstances.

Impacts of COVID-19 on Entrepreneurs
In the first months of the pandemic, TechnoServe conducted surveys with entrepreneurs participating in its programs,
reaching a total of 1,298 firms from across Latin America and Africa. The picture they painted was bleak: 56% ofresponding firms had experienced a sales decline, with an average drop of 52%. More than 40% of surveyed firms hadlaid off employees or planned to do so shortly, and 32% of businesses had halted operations completely. Firms also
anticipated difficulties in the future: 60% of those polled reported they would face liquidity challenges unless theyreceived financing. These challenges were experienced by both women and men entrepreneurs: 67% of maleentrepreneurs and 65% of female entrepreneurs reported that were experiencing declining sales.

TechnoServe’s Crisis Toolkit
TechnoServe’s programs sprang into action, delivering remote support that was guided by the organization’s crisis
toolkit. This step-by-step guide (Figure 41), developed from years of experience, allowed business advisors to leadentrepreneurs through the difficult process of adapting to a crisis — from engagement to diagnosis to planning to action.
A gender lens is also applied to interventions following key principles to help ensure that the pandemic does not widen
the gender gap and that the crisis does not derail efforts to support women’s economic empowerment: (1) ensure that
support reaches women entrepreneurs, (2) protect women’s income and assets, (3) address women’s disproportionate
responsibilities, and (4) provide resources about gender-based violence.
Figure 41. Step-by-Step Crisis Toolkit for Supporting Entrepreneurs

Source: TechnoServe

Effects of the Crisis Toolkit
The support delivered by TechnoServe programs using the crisis toolkit allowed entrepreneurs to adapt and weather the
impacts of the pandemic. Business owners were able to build a mindset for survival, adjusting emotionally to the difficult© 2022 Citigroup

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81

situation. They were able to get a hold of their finances, identifying their current state, their break-even point, and costcutting options. Finally, the toolkit enabled entrepreneurs to identify new market opportunities they could seize amid the
pandemic.
The results were significant. Between July and December of 2020, the share of TechnoServe clients reporting reduced
sales fell from nearly 70% to just 20%, and the share reporting supply-chain challenges fell from 54% to 15%. Notably,both women and men TechnoServe clients reported similar reductions in challenges. (Figure 42)
Figure 42. Women and Men Entrepreneurs Reported a Similar Reduction in Challenges Using TechnoServe’s COVID-19 Survival Toolkit% of Respondents who Reported
Their Business's Sales had
Declined Over the Past Month

80%
70%
60%

67%

Men

Women

65%

50%
40%
30%

22%

20%
18%

10%
0%
Jul-20Aug-20

Sep-20

Oct-20Nov-20Dec-20Source: TechnoServe, Citi Global Insights

Toolkit in Action in Mozambique
In late April, a survey of participants in the Business Women Connect program — women micro-entrepreneurs running
small retail posts, hair salons, bars, and restaurants in Mozambique — found that 46% had closed or were planning to
do so. The program’s business advisors helped the women entrepreneurs to identify new opportunities — hair salonsstarted selling beauty and hygiene products, while bars started offering essential groceries — and manage theirfinances. By late May, 89% of the businesses were open and expected to stay open, and nearly 60% of the previously
shuttered businesses had resumed their activities. To learn more, access the full report here.

Women Entrepreneurs Can Play a Decisive Role inAchieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals
Empowering women entrepreneurs could bea first step in addressing global goals© 2022 Citigroup

The world faces many global challenges beyond the COVID-19 recovery, fromenvironmental issues such as climate change and biodiversity loss to the social
issues of poverty and inequality. The 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs) established in 2015 aim to tackle these key issues and injustices facing theworld by 2030. Gender equality is both itself one of these goals and critical toachieving the other SDGs. As we explored in our Citi GPS report UN Sustainable
Development Goals, the 17 goals are inter-linked and reaching gender equality is a
key element running through many of the global goals.

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Indeed, the 2019 SDG Gender Index launched by Equal Measures 2030 measuresgender equality aligned to each of the SDGs.142 Moreover, a UN discussion paper
from 2019 cites strong evidence that gender equality is an accelerator for achieving
the UN SDGs.143
First, empowering women entrepreneurs is itself an exercise in development asthey will create jobs, generate income, build human capital, and drive growth while
reducing inequalities, leading to reductions in poverty and hunger and improving
health and well-being.
Second, women are also an untapped source of knowledge, perspective, andinnovation and the businesses they create can provide innovative solutions to global
challenges, including improving access to quality care and education, economic
opportunity, clean water and energy, and addressing climate change. Courtney
Leimkuhler, Founding Partner of Springbank Collective, told us that many women
become entrepreneurs after “meeting the problem” and setting out to create thesolution they could not find. In the care economy, for example, women
entrepreneurs are often building innovative companies that address challenges thatmale founder and investors often do not experience or fail to see. Having met the
problem in the course of their life, women have a differentiated insight into both theissues and the nuances of the solutions.
Similarly, Suzanne Biegel notes in our interview with her (see page 104), “Womenare developing innovative climate solutions based on their lived experience.” Hence,
not only are they an untapped resource, but women entrepreneurs may alsopresent a differentiated opportunity for innovation, given their experience as women.
Figure 43. The UN Sustainable Development Goals Are Designed to Be a Roadmap to Achieve a
Better and Sustainable Future for All

Source: United Nations

142 Considers 51 indicators across 14 out of the 17 SDGs. Incidentally, the index foundthat across all goals, no country has achieved the promise of gender equality.
143 UN Development Programme and UN Women, Gender Equality as an Accelerator for

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, February 4, 2019.

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Empowering women entrepreneurs can lead to poverty reduction. Women in lowincome countries often see entrepreneurship as a path to a better future forthemselves and their families, and policymakers already consider entrepreneurshipa key development lever in tackling poverty (SDG 1 — No Poverty). Supporting
women entrepreneurs has a significant “multiplier effect,” especially in low-income
countries, as women tend to invest more of their income than men in the health(SDG 3 — Good Health and Well-Being), education (SDG 4 — Quality Education),
and welfare of their families and communities. Similarly, supporting women
entrepreneurs in the agricultural sector in particular will help to address the problemof hunger (SDG 2 — Zero Hunger).
The Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN reports that if women farmers
were given the same resources as men (e.g., access to land, ownership, tools andcapital), farm yields could increase by 20%-30%, which could reduce the number ofchronically hungry people by 150 million.144 Tackling these challenges is now more
important than ever as the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed millions of people intopoverty and increased world hunger.
Global issues will hit the world’s poorest andmost vulnerable, especially women and girls

Environmental threats are considered to be some of the greatest risks facing theplanet, with the latest World Economic Forum Global Risks Perception Survey
ranking “Climate Action Failure,” “Extreme Weather,” and “Biodiversity Loss” as the
top three most severe risks over a 10-year horizon.145 Climate change, like manyother global issues will hit the world’s poorest and most vulnerable the hardest,
especially women and girls. Studies have found that women face disproportionately
higher health risks from impacts of climate change when compared to men.146
Inequalities also mean that women are most often left out of climate-related
decision making, planning, and implementation but, as the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) emphasizes, women can play a pivotal
role in tackling climate change given their local knowledge and leadership insustainable resource management and practices.147
One rapidly growing climate change areas is the green tech space, but women arevery much underrepresented among climate tech founders accessing capital.
According to PwC, venture capital (VC) funding in the climate sector increased by
84% on a compounded annual basis between 2013 and 2019 (almost five times thatof the wider VC industry). Yet in 2019, just 15% of climate venture funding went tostart-ups with at least one-female founder.148 Women are also underrepresented in
the pipeline of green tech founders, which partially accounts for this gender gap inaccess to finance. One study in Canada found only one in 10 green tech businessfounders are women.149

144 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Women in Agriculture:

Closing the Gender Gap for Development, 2011.
145 World Economic Forum, The Global Risks Report 2022, 17th Edition, 2022.
146 Sam Sellers, Gender and Climate Change: A Closer Look at Existing Evidence,

Global Gender and Climate Alliance, November 2016.
147 “Introduction to Gender and Climate Change,” UN Framework Convention on Climate

Change, accessed February 28, 2022.
148 PwC, The State of Climate Tech 2020. The Next Frontier for Venture Capital,
September 2020.
149 Export Development Canada and MaRS Discovery District, Women in Cleantech:
Closing the Gender Gap in Cleantech Innovation, December 2020.

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There is an immense opportunity here to embed a gender lens to climate solutions,which can deliver a win-win. The good news is that the importance of genderequality in tackling environmental issues, such as climate change and biodiversity
loss, is becoming increasingly recognized. Indeed, studies have also found thatwomen entrepreneurs are more likely than their male counterparts to innovate toaddress social issues.150 As Suzanne Biegel said in our interview with her (see page104), “Fundamentally, women in leadership are paying more attention to climate risk
and impacts. They’re thinking about how to build a resilient business given what isgoing on with climate. They’re opportunistic in changing processes and they’re more
open to shifting.” If the world wants to accelerate climate innovation, a key first stepshould be addressing the gender gap in climate entrepreneurship.
Women have a differentiated insight on
climate issues, which is a pool of untapped
innovation

Empowering women entrepreneurs allows broader society to capitalize on theirknowledge and perspectives, and this could be transformational, especially fordeveloping economies where there is often a convergence of environmental anddevelopmental challenges:
 More than 2.6 billion people worldwide still lack access to clean cooking fuels —a key element in tackling climate change.151 Women and girls suffer the mostfrom this shortfall, and every year nearly four million people die from illnesses
related to cooking with polluting fuels.152 Women are key to increasing access toclean energy, but they should not be considered as only energy users andbeneficiaries of access program. Instead, they should be empowered to beenergy providers and entrepreneurs. They can improve access to households
and can more easily interact and connect with women end-users. A study in
Kenya found that women entrepreneurs sold three times more clean cookstoves
than their male counterparts when given the same level of training.153 The
International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) also emphasizes the“instrumental value” of involving women in the renewable energy supply chain.154

150 UN Conference on Trade and Development, A Survey on Women’s Entrepreneurshipand Innovation, 2013.
151 “Collecting Water is Often a Colossal Waste of Time for Women and Girls,” UNICEF,

August 29, 2016.
152 “Fact Sheet – Household Air Pollution and Health,” World Health Organization,
September 22, 2021.
153 “Study Shows Women Cookstove Sellers Outsell Men 3 to 1,” Clean Cooking
Alliance, May 4, 2015.
154 International Renewable Energy Agency, Renewable Energy: A Gender Perspective,
January 2019.

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 Women and girls are responsible for collecting water in 80% of households

without access to water on site and, according to UNICEF, women and girls
around the world collectively spend around 200 million hours every day collecting
water.155 More extreme weather events driven by climate change will likely lead
to women and girls spending even more time collecting water and taking moretime away from education and formal employment. In many countries around theworld, women are also the ones managing water use at home. Women have theknowledge and experience to build better water systems. Studies have shownthat women’s involvement in management has correlated with more effective
water systems, but they are underrepresented in decision making and as
entrepreneurs in the sector.156
 Empowering women entrepreneurship in the energy and water, sanitation andhygiene (WASH) sectors can not only improve access to clean energy, drinking
water, and sanitation at the community level by leveraging women’s knowledge,
expertise, and access; it can also help to save lives, reduce domestic burdens on
women, generate income, and support public health and gender equality.
Women entrepreneurs could play a moresignificant role in the food value chain

Reducing the environmental impacts of the agriculture and food sector is critical totackling climate change and biodiversity loss. Studies have found global foodsystems are responsible for more than one-third of global anthropogenic
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and are the world’s biggest driver of nature
loss.157 Women play a significant role in agriculture and the food value chain, butthey are underrepresented in leadership and innovation. Women currently hold 23%
of agribusiness management roles and globally only make up 5.4% ofentrepreneurs in the sector.158 Empowering women entrepreneurs in this sector
could help to accelerate climate and nature solutions in agriculture as well as build amore inclusive sector. Suzanne Biegel gave some fantastic examples of women-led
companies (see the discussion on Gro Intelligence and Farm from a Box on page100) that are innovating in the climate and food space and developing solutions thatcan be deployed in both emerging and developed markets.
In all of these ways, boosting gender equality in entrepreneurial activities will not
only benefit women, but also their families, communities, and economies. We
should not underestimate the potential of women entrepreneurs in tackling global
challenges and the ripple effect it has across economies, societies, and the global
goals, especially as the world looks to recover post COVID-19. The scale of theopportunity presented by equal participation in entrepreneurship is huge with theInternational Labour Organization estimating some 50% of women’s entrepreneurial
potential is underused, compared with 22% of men’s.159

155 “Collecting Water is Often a Colossal Waste of Time for Women and Girls,” UNICEF,

August 29, 2016.
156 Panthea Pouramin, Nidhi Nagabhatia, and Michela Miletto, “A Systematic Review ofWater and Gender Interlinkages: Assessing the Intersection with Health”, Frontiers in
Water, 2, 6 (April 2020).
157 Monica Crippa et al., “Food Systems Are Responsible for a Third of Global
Anthropogenic GHG Emissions,” Nature Food, 2 (March 2021): 198-209; Tim G. Benton
et al., Food System Impacts on Biodiversity Loss. Three Levers for Food System
Transformation in Support of Nature, Chatham House, February 2021.
158 Amanda B. Elam et al., Women’s Entrepreneurship Report 2018/2019, Babson
College, Smith College, and Global Entrepreneurship Research Association, 2019.
159 International Labour Organization, Women at Work Trends, March 8, 2016.

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The Strong Business Case for Enabling and Supporting
Women Entrepreneurs
Diverse Supply Chains Build Resilience, Sustainability, and Growth
Investing in and supporting women-owned and led businesses is not only an
opportunity to address the global challenges of our time, it is also the smart thing to
do for business. A major area of opportunity is in supply chain and procurement.
Globally, one-third of registered SMEs are estimated to be owned by women, butless than 1% of spending by large corporations and governments on suppliers isearned by women-owned businesses.160 The sectoral imbalance we discussed inearlier chapters plays a factor here, as industries that often have high-value
contracts such as ICT, construction, transport, and logistics tend to be more maledominated.
The business case for diversifying global
supply chains

Over the past few years, progress has been made in integrating women-owned
businesses into corporate supply chains, and the importance of gender-smart
procurement is being increasingly recognized. Several studies have also shown thatgender-responsive procurement practices have a positive impact on business. A
recent international Finance Corporation (IFC) study showed that the inclusion of
women-owned and led businesses in the supply chain enabled access to a wider
range of suppliers leading to price competitiveness and minimized disruptions.161
Further, a study from the National Women’s Business Council in 2015 found that
~34% of companies that diversified their supplier base reported a positive impact on
their profitability.162 In our Citi GPS report Women in the Economy II, we highlighted
the importance of gender-sensitive procurement in driving women’s economic
empowerment as well as strengthening access to markets, and increasing supply
options for businesses. The report took a “value chain” approach to the businesscase and also highlighted the many other benefits of women’s participation (seeFigure 44).

160 Elizabeth A. Vazquez and Barbara Frankel, The Business Case for Global Supplier

Diversity and Inclusion: The Critical Contributions of Women and Other Underutilized
Suppliers to Corporate Value Chains, WEConnect International, 2017.
161 International Finance Corporation, Building Inclusive Supply Chains:Lessons
Learned, 2021.
162 National Women’s Business Council, Research on Women’s Participation in
Corporate Supplier Diversity Programs, 2016.

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Figure 44. A Value Chain Approach to the Business Case

Source: Citi GPS: Women in the Economy II
Women are powerful consumers

It is also important to remember that women are half of the global population and as
powerful consumers, they represent a big business opportunity. As Figure 44
shows, women make or influence 80% of buying decisions and control $20 trillion in
global spending. Even back in 2009, The Boston Consulting Group identified thewomen’s market as “the most important commercial opportunity in our lifetime.”163
While there has been progress, a huge gap remains between potential and reality.
However, adopting more gender smart procurement practices can help to kick starta virtuous cycle as women suppliers will have a unique understanding andperspective on the women’s market, can anticipate the needs of their market, andare also consumers themselves. Supporting women-owned businesses can deliver
other benefits for corporates such as improved reputation and standing with internaland external stakeholders, i.e., investors, consumers, employees, and business
partners.
Unfortunately, the efforts made to include women in supply chains have taken a hit
as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the International Trade Centre warns
that without targeted trade-related support, many women-led businesses will fail.164
The agency also emphasizes supply chain disruptions caused by COVID-19 havefurther exacerbated cash flow and access to finance challenges faced by womenowned and led businesses. However, addressing supply chain challenges requires
the opposite approach: we must not return to business-as-usual global supply chain
models, which the pandemic has unveiled to be much riskier than previously
thought.

163 Michael Silverstein and Kate Sayre, Women Want More: How to Capture More ThanYour Share of the Female Economy, BCG, 2009.
164 International Trade Centre with International Chamber of Commerce, UPS and

Women20, Women Entrepreneurs: An Action Plan to ‘Build Back Better,’ 2020.

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Integrating women into corporate supply chains and adopting more inclusive
sourcing practices is even more imperative in light of the pandemic, helping to build
more resilient and sustainable supply chains, increase revenue and growth, drivecompetition and innovation, as well as increase market penetration and access to
new markets. According to UN Women, “Simply stated, gender-responsive
procurement is a win for both the corporations and the women suppliers.”165

Citi Supplier Diversity
Darrell Johnson — VP, Supply Chain Development, Inclusion, and Sustainability, Citi and Anindya Sankar Ray— Senior VP, Operational Risk Sr. Officer, Citi
Citi Supplier Diversity works to create mutually beneficial business relationships with diverse suppliers that strengthen
the communities we serve and create value for our shareholders. The global program supports and encourages Citi
business groups to identify and include diverse suppliers and consultants in their purchasing activities. Working withthird-party certification agencies, the Supplier Diversity Program maintains a list of diverse suppliers, seeks additional
suppliers for referral to purchasing areas, and secures the assistance needed to help diverse suppliers meet our criteria
in the procurement process, including strategies around mentoring, training, and networking.
In 2021, we established our Mentor-Protégé program, designed to strengthen our diverse suppliers’ capabilities andexpand their opportunities both inside and outside Citi. Through this program, Citi connects established Tier 1 supplierswith minority-, Black-, and/or women-owned Tier 2 suppliers in a mentoring relationship. This provides smaller, diverse
suppliers with an opportunity to gain valuable experience in financial services and build important skills to help themcompete in the marketplace. One successful pairing within this program is that of mentor company Tata Consultancy
Services (TCS), a Tier 1 supplier offering IT & Operations services to Citi, and protégé firm Technology Concepts GroupInternational (TCGi), a Black-, woman-owned supplier that provides IT services to TCS for the benefit of Citi. The uniqueelement of this pairing is that TCS has contextualized and structured the mentorship around TCGi’s current challenges
and shifted gears from training to capability building. As a result, TCGi is building holistic expertise including technical,
functional, and soft skills.
It is also important to note the role of government procurement: not only do genderinformed practices allow governments to lead by example but, according toestimates by the International Trade Centre, public procurement constitutes over
30% of GDP in developing economies (vs. 10%-15% in developed economies). Thismeans public procurement has significant potential to move the needle on thegrowth and empowerment of women-led and owned enterprises by including themin its value chain.166 It is important to remember that these efforts are
simultaneously promoting diversity and inclusion, and improving the lives of womenand their families around the world.

Women-Owned Businesses Represent Untapped Business
Opportunities for Financial Institutions
Women-led businesses are an untapped
opportunity for financial institutions

Financial institutions can also benefit from better inclusion of women entrepreneurs
and women-owned businesses. In Chapter 2, we saw that access to capital is oneof the biggest, if not the biggest, challenges that women entrepreneurs face.
Tackling other barriers are necessary and important, but as one women
entrepreneur put it, “Networks are great for asking and answering questions, but the
networks do not provide capital.” Fundamentally, more must be done to improve
women entrepreneurs’ access to capital.

165 Keric Chin, The Power of Procurement: How to Source from Women-Owned

Businesses, UN Women, 2017.
166 “The Procurement Initiative,” International Trade Centre, accessed February 28,

2022.

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Financial institutions have a key role to play in improving access to finance forwomen-owned and led businesses, but again it is not just the right thing to do, itmakes good business sense, and offers untapped commercial opportunities. Someof the staggering statistics on the current landscape include: After reaching an all-time high in 2019 (2.8%, an already very low figure), theshare of venture capital going to women globally fell back to 2.3% in 2020 during
the pandemic.167 The situation is worse for diverse women founders with just
0.6% of VC dollars going to Black women in the U.S. since 2009.168
 Up to 70% of women-owned SMEs in the formal sector in developing economies

are unserved or underserved by financial institutions.169
 In 2018, emerging markets accounted for just 18% of equity and venture capitalraised, and start-ups with a woman on their founding team received only 11% ofseed financing and only 5% of later-stage venture capital.170
Women-led SMEs have lower nonperforming loan (NPL) ratios

We noted in earlier chapters that, in general, lenders and investors perceive women
entrepreneurs as risker, but this is far from the truth. Evidence and research showthat women-led businesses can be more profitable than those led by men when
they can access finance. For example, for four consecutive years, the nonperforming loan (NPL) ratio has been lower for women-led SMEs than for SMEs as
a whole.171 The same source notes that in a smaller sample of clients who run
strategies to specifically target women borrowers, the improved performance ofloans to women is even more pronounced: 3.2% average NPL ratio for women-led
SMEs compared with 4.6% across the portfolio (see Figure 45).

167 Ashley Bittner and Brigette Lau, “Women-Led Start-Ups Received Just 2.3% of VC

Funding in 2020,” Harvard Business Review, February 25, 2021.
168 ProjectDiane, accessed February 28, 2022.
169 International Finance Corporation, Women-Owned SMEs: A Business Opportunity for

Financial Institutions, 2014.
170 International Finance Corporation, Moving Towards Gender Balance in Private Equity

and Venture Capital, 2019.
171 International Finance Corporation, Banking on Women, Business Case Update #4:

Lower NPLs for Women-Owned SMEs, December 22, 2021.

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Figure 45. Women-Led SMEs and SME 90-Day Non-Performing Loan (NPL) Ratio, 2017-19

6.0%
5.0%
4.0%
3.0%
2.0%
1.0%
0.0%
2017

2018
W-SME NPLs %

2019

2020

SME NPLs %Source: IFC 2021
Significant untapped financing demand
among women entrepreneurs

There remains significant funding gaps for women-owned businesses around theworld. Women entrepreneurs are often overlooked and underserved but represent a
potentially highly profitable client group for financial institutions. Data availability is a
key issue, and this applies to the whole micro, small and medium enterprise(MSME) lending sector.
Using the latest data for 2017, IFC estimated potential demand and current supplyof MSME finance for 135 developing countries, revealing a finance gap of
approximately $4.7 trillion and that 55% of potential demand for MSME finance isunmet. This equates to 131 million enterprises, or 41% of formal MSMEs indeveloping countries with unmet financing needs.172 The database also includes
data on the informal sector, and estimates there is a $2.76 trillion potential informal
demand for MSME finance. If we consider informal demand as a percent of formal
demand, it is highest in low-income countries (80%) and in Sub-Saharan Africa(78%). Data on the informal sector is limited, and so the data described below
focuses on the formal sector.
IFC estimates the microenterprise financing gap at $611 billion, whereas the SME
gap is $4.1 trillion. This supports our earlier discussion of the “Missing Middle” ofSMEs in developing economies. Financing remains a challenge for SMEs overall,
regardless of gender, but women face additional constraints and barriers tofinancing. Women-owned MSMEs make up 23% of the total number of enterprises,
and have a finance gap estimated at $1.5 trillion, accounting for 32% of the total
MSME finance gap. Women-owned businesses make up an outsized share of thetotal SME finance gap with 34% ($1.4 trillion), compared to 21% ($126 billion) of thetotal microenterprise finance gap.

172 “MSME Finance Gap Database,” International Finance Corporation, last modified

October 2018.

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91

Figure 46. Micro, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (MSME) Finance Gap by Gender and Size of Enterprise

Source: MSME Finance Gap Database (data for 2017)

If we consider the data by region (see Figure 47), then the finance gap women facein East Asia and Pacific for both microenterprises and SMEs account for the highest
share of the total finance gap by region. For microenterprises, these are closely
followed by the Middle East and North Africa, and Europe and Central Asia. For
SMEs, women-owned businesses account for 60% of the finance gap in East Asia
and Pacific, compared to the second highest Sub-Saharan Africa with 17%.
Figure 47. Women Microenterprise and SME Finance Gap by Region
Women Microenterprise Finance Gap

Women SME Finance Gap

70

35%

1,400

30%

1,200

70%

Finance Gap (US$bn)

60
28%
26%

50

25%

40

20%

30

15%

58

20

36

10%

10

10%

9%
16
8

4

4%
4

0

5%

Finance Gap ($bn)

South Asia

Middle Eastand North
AfricaSub-Saharan Latin America
Africaand theCaribbean

Women finance gap as % of total finance gap

60%

60%

1,000

50%

800

40%

600

30%

1168

400
200

20%
11%
65

0%
East Asia and Europe andPacific
Central Asia

Finance Gap (US$bn)

33%

8%
23

16%

17%

21

40

9%

10%

88

0

0%
East Asia and Europe andPacific
Central Asia

Finance Gap ($mns)

South Asia

Middle East Sub-Saharan Latin America
and North
Africaand theAfricaCaribbean

Women finance gap as % of total finance gap

Source: IFC
Microfinance institutions have madesignificant progress on lending to women

It is worth highlighting the success of microfinance over the past few decades. As
we point out in our Citi GPS report Banking the Next Billion, microfinanceinstitutions have helped to overcome some of the biggest obstacles in access tocredit and savings products by designing financial products and lending
methodologies based on an understanding of client needs and capacity. The core ofmost micro-lending operations are the “lending groups,” which typically consist of
women entrepreneurs.173 The report also notes that borrowers can also graduate toindividual SME lending products with some microfinance institutions.

173 Citi GPS, Banking the Next Billion, January 2020.

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Most interventions to promote women’s entrepreneurship in developing economies
to date have focused on microenterprises and not on those trying to grow to
become SMEs.174 This represents an untapped opportunity for financial institutions,and taking a more targeted approach to women-owned SMEs around the world andespecially in emerging markets represents a promising business opportunity.
Unlocking this opportunity will require more gender-smart solutions to help womenowned SMEs access finance — business-as-usual is unlikely to be enough.
Financial institutions should also try to understand why credit policies make women
entrepreneurs look riskier when in fact they are not. Figure 45 noted that, at least interms of their non-performing loan ratio, women represent a lower risk. There is
growing evidence to support this as they are responsible borrowers and loyal
customers — yet women continue to be underrepresented in lending portfolios.175
However, it is not all down to the financial institutions to deliver better-suited
products and services for women entrepreneurs. Efforts also need to be made in
addressing constraints on the “demand side,” which include women’s concerns andmisperceptions around applying for credit, as well as providing training andeducation to help women entrepreneurs make productive use of the capital they areable to access.
This business opportunity relates not only to women-owned SMEs; both men andwomen entrepreneurs are in the “Missing Middle” of emerging economies. Bothmen and women entrepreneurs lack access to capital large enough to grow theirbusiness where microfinance loans are too small, but traditional banks perhaps
deem them too risky. Innovating SMEs’ access to capital in emerging economies
could prove to be an attractive commercial opportunity for financial institutions whoare seeking new markets and sources of growth.

Investment Ecosystems Need to Change to Better Support
Women Entrepreneurs
Properly supported, women-led businesses
can be more profitable than those led bymen

Investors also stand to benefit from investing in more women-owned and ledbusinesses. However, like lenders, they often consider women-led businesses arisky investment, even though there is growing evidence that shows women
entrepreneurs can generate more revenue than their male counterparts. While
women-led businesses as a whole are less profitable, women-led businesses thatreceive funding are more profitable.176
First Round, a seed-stage venture firm, analyzed ten years of their own investingdata and found that companies with at least one female founder outperformed
teams made up of exclusively men, performing 63% better than all-male teams.177

174 Ana Revenga and Meagan Dooley, “What Types of Interventions Promote Women’s

Entrepreneurship?” Brookings, September 16, 2020.
175 Financial Alliance for Women, Measuring the Value of the Female Economy: 2021

Edition,” 2022.
176 Lee Allison et al., Gender and Firm Performance around the World: The Roles ofFinance, Technology, and Labor, SSRN, January 12, 2021.
177 Canada Post, “The Power of Female Small Business Owners and Leaders,” Business

Matters, accessed February 27, 2022.

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BCG found that for every $1 of investment raised, women owned start-ups
generated $0.78 in revenue, compared to $0.31 from men-owned start-ups.178
Studies in the U.S. further found that the median exit time for a woman-led VCbacked business is 6.9 years versus the broader U.S. market at 7.5 years.179
To unlock this opportunity, more inclusive products and services are certainly
needed but the more we spoke to women entrepreneurs, the more we realizedchange is needed across the investment ecosystem in order to unlock theopportunity that women-led businesses present: Women entrepreneurs often face conscious and unconscious bias andstereotyping when speaking to male investors. As one women entrepreneur
based in an emerging market shared with us, “Women are too often judged
based on proof rather than potential.” Struggling to understand the potential ofwomen entrepreneurs is, in part, attributable to gender stereotypes.
 Misperceptions of women results in different experiences of the capital raisingprocess. Supported by our own conversations, studies have found that women
entrepreneurs are more likely to be given “risk-based” questions frominvestors, whereas men are usually asked “opportunity-based” questions.180
 Predominantly male investors lack understanding of the markets womenfounders address. Women founders often innovate for women customers,
which men have less understanding or visibility on and would perhaps be lesslikely to fund. Sophie Smith, Founder and CEO of Nabta Health, told us that
because she was working on a product for women, the male investors she met
with failed to grasp the opportunity her business presented and the problems it
tackled.
Improving investor diversity is a key firststep in diversifying investment portfolios

Much of this is driven by the fact that investors are predominantly men while manyof the women who are in the industry are often not in roles that allow them to makea funding offer, as we saw in Chapter 2. Moreover, just as there was a businesscase for investing in women entrepreneurs, there is also a business case fordiversifying investment teams. First, we saw above both that women investors are
more likely to invest in women-led companies and that women-led businesses
provided a greater return on investment. It follows that women investors present an
opportunity to increase return on investment by investing in women-led businesses.
Second, a 2019 IFC study found that private equity and venture capital funds withgender-balanced senior investment teams generated 10%-20% higher returns
compared with funds with a majority of men or women leaders.181

178 Katie Abouzahr et al., “Why Women-Owned Startups Are a Better Bet”,” BCG, June

6, 2018.
179 PitchBook, All In: Female Founders and CEOs in the US VC Ecosystem, December

2020.
180 For example, see Dana Kanze et al., “We Ask Men to Win and Women Not to Lose:

Closing the Gender Gap in Start-Up Funding,” Academy of Management Journal 61, no.
2 (April 2018): 586-614.
181 International Finance Corporation, Moving Towards Gender Balance in Private Equity
and Venture Capital, 2019.

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Finally, a 2018 study of the venture capital industry found evidence for a “diversity
dividend” not only in terms of better decision making — which is already wellestablished — but also in terms of investment performance.182 This constitutes asignificant business case for the greater inclusion of women investors.
However, improving the diversity of investors is not a “silver bullet.” We also think
more needs to be done to address the gender stereotyping and unconscious biasthat still takes place in investor meetings. It is not only about having more womeninvestors, but also about raising awareness regarding the issues and closing theknowledge gap between women entrepreneurs and investors — regardless ofgender. This includes male investors seeking out the knowledge that will help themto understand the proposition of many women-led businesses. As one woman
entrepreneur we spoke to put it, “It’s not about forcing them to invest in women, it’s
about educating them on why they should invest in women”.
Growth of women’s wealth gives reason for
optimism

We are encouraged by two connected growing trends: the transfer in wealth and therise of ESG and gender lens investing. First, women’s wealth is growing and women
entrepreneurs’ growing wealth is contributing to this. Citi’s experts at Citi Private
Bank describe this trend and how they are responding to it in greater detail.

182 Paul Gompers and Silpa Kovvali, “The Other Diversity Dividend,” Harvard Business

Review, July-August 2018.

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Citi Private Bank: Women Entrepreneurship and the Roleof Wealth Management“The continued growth of female entrepreneurship doesn’t only benefit those
women business creators or even women more generally. Rather, it’s great foreconomic growth and society as a whole. We at Citi Private Bank are proud to beserving female entrepreneurs globally whose companies range from recent startups to venerable multi-generational businesses.”— Ida Liu, Global Head of Citi Private BankThe Rise and Rise of Female Entrepreneurs

Sarah Courtney Dockett
Director, Head of Female Clients
Citi Private Bank, EMEA

Madeline Seddon
Director
Citi Private Bank, EMEA

Global wealth ownership is in the midst of an unprecedented transformation. For
most of history, the large majority of wealth worldwide has remained in the hands ofmen. This, however, is now changing. Women may already control one-third ofglobal wealth. According to a report by BCG, female wealth may have stood at $77
trillion in early 2020.183 This amount is growing fast: between 2019 and 2023, thecompound annual growth rate for women’s wealth may reach 7.2%. In the emerging
economies of Asia-ex Japan and Latin America, the pace may be more rapid still.
The shift in wealth ownership has many drivers. Particularly in the emerging world,increasing female integration into the workforce is an obvious driver of greater
wealth ownership. Among the wealthiest in society, women worldwide are inheriting
wealth from previous generations and spouses. This is likely to accelerate over the
coming years as members of the Baby Boom generation (born 1946-1964) and theprior generations age further. Increasingly, though, women are creating wealththrough entrepreneurship.
Citi Private Bank clients include entrepreneurs, corporate executives, professional
investors, family principals, and a variety of other wealth owners. Our operations
therefore provide us with a unique vantage point from which to consider evolving
trends among the world’s ultra-high net worth population. We find that Millennial
women are generating wealth faster than women belonging to previous generations.
And a larger proportion of these younger women are earning their wealth throughbusiness than inheritance. Among Citi Private Bank clients in Europe, the Middle
East and Africa (EMEA), our analysis shows that 39% of female relationship heads
generated their wealth through entrepreneurship or business ownership.184 Although
men still dominate entrepreneurship around the world, women’s appetite forentrepreneurship is on the rise. Between 2009 and 2019, the proportion of start-ups
globally with at least one female founder is estimated to have doubled (see Figure48). We expect this uptrend to continue over time.

Citi Private Bank serves around 15,000
wealthy individuals and families worldwide.
They have a minimum net worth of $25
million and an average net worth in excess
of $100 million. Citi Private Bank also servedsome 25% of the world’s billionaires.

183 Anna Zakrzewski et al., “Managing the Next Decade of Women’s Wealth,” BCG, April

9, 2020.
184 Growth Opportunity – Female Wealth, Citi Private Bank, 2021.

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Figure 48. Share of Start-Ups with at Least One Female Founder (as of February 14, 2022)
(%)
25
20
15
10
5
0
2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2018

Source: Statista, Citi Global Data Insights

Wealth Management and Entrepreneurs
As the number of ultra-high net worth women entrepreneurs and other female
wealth owners continues to increase, so do their needs for private banking andother wealth management services. These services frequently play a vital role insupporting our entrepreneur clients’ ongoing business activities rather than simply
protecting and growing wealth earned from those activities.
Many of today’s entrepreneurs wish to remain invested and involved in thebusinesses they began or joined even after an initial public offering. A wealthmanager can facilitate this by helping them to manage their large, concentrated,and possibly illiquid position in their company. This may involve enabling them toborrow against that holding, creating hedges to mitigate the risks, or other strategies
to retain ownership efficiently.
While often overlooked, trust and wealth planning are key to entrepreneurs at every
stage. Such services can provide an efficient structure for ownership of theirbusiness. This is important whether the intention is to continue growing thebusiness for the long-term — and perhaps pass it to the next generation — orwhether an immediate or eventual sale is in store. A trust structure canaccommodate a public or private shareholding, providing potential tax optimizationand shielding from legal challenges.
Connections to other entrepreneurs and potential investors are another benefit that
wealth management can provide. Networking events and thought leadershipprograms are key to this. Such occasions bring together like-minded clients fromacross the world and can feed into strategic thinking and even lead to opportunities
for business growth, new ventures, and financing.
Our approach at Citi Private Bank addresses not only individual entrepreneurs andtheir families but also their businesses. This involves connecting the owners of
eligible companies to Citi’s Institutional Clients Group and to Citi’s Commercial
Bank. Entrepreneurs’ companies can thus gain access to banking facilities, capitalraising, sales and trading, and mergers and acquisitions.

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Addressing Female Entrepreneurs
Female entrepreneurship is not a new phenomenon. However, the financial industry— including wealth managers — have traditionally focused squarely on maleentrepreneurs, who have been much more numerous.
With the ongoing rise of women entrepreneurs today, there is growing recognition of
the need for institutions to address these important business creators more directly
and to help close the funding gap with their male counterparts. Above all, this is
motivated by the realization that empowering female entrepreneurs is not just theright thing to do but is also good for growth.
First and foremost, Citi Private Bank approaches female entrepreneurs as
businesspeople rather than women. However, we also see the case for initiatives toengage specifically with women as clients to increase their participation. Our
Female Business Development Board has oversight of our strategy in this regard.
Events targeted at women clients, other networking opportunities, and educational
materials have been among our main outputs to date.

What We Have Learned So Far
Our engagement initiatives with female entrepreneurs and other wealth owners
have already yielded findings that are shaping our approach. While we recognizethat all clients are unique, we also recognize that gender may have an influence on
their outlook both in business and wealth management. Our experience echoes
certain key findings of a recent report by McKinsey & Co.
First, there is greater demand for financial advice from women.185 They areinterested in being educated in financial matters and would make the time for this.
While risk tolerances may differ between genders, we feel that women’s tendency to
be more goal-oriented than purely investment performance-oriented can sometimes
be interpreted as their being more risk averse.186
Personal fit with advisors is a priority.187 Most women tend to not explicitly look for afemale advisor but place great value on having a personal connection with theiradvisor. Many of our female clients have also expressed the desirability of senior
female representation at the institutions that manage their wealth. Further, theyoften prefer an integrated team of advisors, where their wealth management firms
work closely with their lawyers, accountants, and other personnel.
Women are especially likely to seek out a financial advisor following a pivotal life
moment.188 This might include a divorce, separation, or bereavement. In cases ofdivorce or separation, changing financial advisors is more probable than following a
bereavement. We have also observed amongst our female clients a strongemphasis on incorporating and planning for the next generation. They frequently
introduce their children to us, and seek their participation in our financial andbusiness education programs for the next generation.

185 Pooneh Baghai et al., “Women as the Next Wave of Growth in U.S. WealthManagement,” McKinsey & Company, July 29, 2020.
186 Ibid.
187 Ibid.
188 Ibid.

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We also note a marked appetite among female entrepreneurs for networking withlike-minded clients. This does not mean, however, that they seek to attend womenonly events. On the contrary, they express a strong desire for women-orientated
events to be attended by all genders, such that they may have more opportunities tomeet, share ideas, and perhaps collaborate in the future.

Serving Female Entrepreneurs: The Way Ahead
Based on our analysis and experience to date, we continue to shape our approachto female entrepreneurs and wealth creators. Within this, we have identified certain
elements that we believe will be especially important in serving them. Naturally,
many of these are common to our approach to clients of other genders, such as
cross-border service and introductions to Citi’s institutional services for theirbusinesses. We place even more emphasis on sustainable investment and otherpractices, where women are often especially passionate. And our relationship modelstresses gender diversity and constancy of personnel.
At the same time, we believe in the importance of events and content that speak
especially — albeit not exclusively — to female entrepreneurs and wealth creators.
Showcasing individual successes of women company founders and others appears
to resonate most strongly here. We expect growing interest in helping to nurture thelatest female entrepreneurs to be breaking through, as the more established cohort
seeks to “pay it forward.” Ultimately, though, women helping women can only be apart of the story. Just as its benefits are society-wide, advancing female
entrepreneurship involves all entrepreneurs.
Rise of ESG investing is encouraging for
future generations of women entrepreneurs

Related to the increase in women investors, is the rise of ESG investing. Global
data shows that women investors and millennials are driving sustainable investingand especially gender lens investing.189 ESG-screened assets under management
now stand at more than $35 trillion, with the signatories of the UN-backed Principles
for Responsible Investment (PRI) now representing more than $120 trillion.190
Investors are increasingly embracing the UN SDGs and aligning their investment
strategies to the 17 goals. There is no strict definition of gender lens investing. It
could target increasing women’s access to finance; advancing women in leadership;
investing in products and services that improve the lives of women; increasing
gender equality in the workplace; or tackling gender-related issues such as
violence, health, and education. This broad definition is perhaps a major reason
why statistics on gender lens investing vary widely. However, one consistent findingis that gender lens investments are growing.

189 Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing, Sustainable Signals, August 2017.
190 Global Sustainable Investment Alliance, Global Sustainable Investment Review 2020,

July 2021; “Enhance Our Global Footprint,” Annual Report 2021, Principles for
Responsible Investment (PRI), accessed March 1, 2022.

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99

GenderSmart estimates that $17 billion to $20 billion has gone into gender lensinvesting, which is still a very small portion of the $35 trillion total. Separately, areport by the US SIF Foundation put investments with a gender lens at $868 billion
in 2018, but this considers any mentions of gender as an investment factor.191 Veris
Wealth Partners reports that gender lens investing-mandated investments into
public market strategies reached $3.4 billion in 2019, up from $100 million in 2014(see Figure 49).192
Figure 49. Capital Inflows to Public Market Gender-Focused Products
Considering Stocks, Bonds, and Certificates of Deposits)

Figure 50. Capital Raised by Venture Capital, Private Equity, and Private
Debt With a Gender Lens

4.0

6

138

3.4

3.5

150

5
3.0

(US$bn)(US$bn)

2.5
2.0
1.5

1.3

100

87

3
58
2

50

2.2

Number of Funds

4.8
4

2.4

1.0
0.6

1

0.5

1.1

0.1

0

0.0
2014

2016

2017

2018

Source: Veris Wealth Partners

2019

0
2017

2018

2019

Source: Project Stage 3.0

Gender lens investing is growing acrossgeographies and asset classes

Research into the private market also shows growth: analysis from the Wharton
Social Impact Initiative found that structured private equity, venture capital, andprivate debt funds with a gender lens reached 138 funds from 87 funds in 2018 and
58 funds in 2017 (see Figure 50). Diversity in where funds are deployed is also
increasing, and there has been a significant increase in the number and percentage
of funds that invest outside North America in the past few years with Sub-SaharanAfrica now the second most common target.193

Opportunity to integrate sustainable andgender lens investing

We discussed above the importance of empowering women to provide climate
solutions (see page 81). There are also untapped opportunities in integrating
sustainable investing and gender lens investing, which have tended to operate
independent of each other. Taking a more integrated approach can deliver many
benefits, which according to GenderSmart, include mitigating risk; amplifying social
impact; re-envisioning and fulfilling fiduciary duty, and meeting investors’
expectations; driving long-term value; and finding new investment opportunities.194
We highlighted above clean energy, water and sanitation, food, and agriculture as
sectors where empowering women entrepreneurs could drive climate solutions.

191 U.S. SIF Foundation, Investing to Advance Women: A Guide for Investors, February

2020.
192 Patricia Farrar-Rivas and Alison Pyott, “Gender Lens Investing: Assets Grow to MoreThan $3.4 Billion,” Veris Wealth Partners, March 4, 2020.
193 Suzanne Biegel and Sandi M Hunt, Project Sage 3.0: Tracking Venture Capital,

Private Equity, and Private Debt with a Gender Lens, Catalyst At Large and Wharton
Social Impact, July 2020.
194 GenderSmart, “Gender & Climate Investment: A Strategy for Unlocking a Sustainable
Future,” 2021.

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These sectors clearly demonstrate the intersectionality of climate and gender, but
the two are very much cross-cutting themes that apply to all sectors, geographies,
and asset classes.
The investment industry is evolving positively but there must be more concerted
efforts across the industry towards gender balance and in addressing the barriers
that women entrepreneurs face, especially for diverse women. Giving women
entrepreneurs the level playing field they deserve is good business sense and is not
an opportunity the investment community should ignore. We hope this chapter has
demonstrated the wealth of opportunities women’s entrepreneurship can unleash,
and that empowering women through entrepreneurship is critical to unlocking
innovative, sustainable, and inclusive solutions to the many global challenges weface. Taking action now to remove the barriers impeding women entrepreneurs
around the world could be the smartest decision we make in “building back better.”

An Interview with Henriette Kolb, Head of Gender andEconomic Inclusion Group at IFC
Henriette, thank you for taking the time to speak to us. Can you start by telling
us how entrepreneurship fits into the broader picture of gender and economic
inclusion?
Thank you for inviting me to reflect on where opportunities remain for women
entrepreneurs. The regional and country context play a significant role in how
entrepreneurship fits into women’s economic contribution. For example, in Africa,
over 50% of entrepreneurs are women, although they are usually not all formallyregistered businesses. There are other region-specific trends: in the Middle East &and North Africa (MENA) region, for example, a lot of women entrepreneurs start intheir 40s. Most women have never been in the formal labor force before, but once
their kids are out of the house, they start a business.

Henriette Kolb
Head of Gender and Economic Inclusion
Group

However, uniformly across the world, women entrepreneurs tend to be concentrated
in sectors that are less profitable, they tend to have smaller businesses, and theytend to have smaller loans. All of this informs the barriers that women will face. But
for women’s economic development, they need to have equal access to networks,
finance, digital tools, and non-financial services to grow their businesses. The
potential is there, and we are short-changing ourselves by not unlocking thecontribution that women could make.

International Finance Corporation (IFC)

For a long time, development professionals have entertained the view that women
entrepreneurs are micro-entrepreneurs, they are great borrowers, and their nonperforming loans are lower than that of men. But while microfinance is important,the financial community must recognize that women entrepreneurs can also play anenormous role across asset classes, and way beyond microfinance. Microfinanceinstitutions have started to professionalize and commercialize lending to small andmedium enterprises, but there is still a decline in women’s participation after the
micro-enterprise stage.
During COVID-19, a lot of women exited the labor force, including women in lowerskilled, lower-paid employment as well as women in dual income households who
have decided they do not want to stay in employment. We will need to observegoing forward whether women stay out of the labor force completely or if they turnto entrepreneurship. It is too early to say, but it will be interesting to observe thedynamics around bringing women back into the workforce.

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Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions

Continuing with the COVID-19 impact, what is needed to support the recovery
of women entrepreneurs?
Access to digital tools is key. First, online enterprise is growing exponentially acrossall continents, but we must not replicate online the gender gaps that we have offline.
For example, a recent report on e-commerce in Africa showed that although women
entrepreneurs were previously outpacing their male counterparts, during COVID-19
women’s online sales dropped by 7% but men’s sales went up by 7%. There has
been a shift of opportunities during COVID-19. Before, women were more likely tojuggle care work and paid work even if tremendously difficult, but this situation cameundone during the pandemic. Both men and women did more care work, but inmany parts of the world, women picked up the most of this work while schools andday cares closed.
Second, a gender lens must be applied to online, embedded financing platforms.
The uptake of online lending is not equal between men and women. For example,
while online platforms provide loans for entrepreneurs, women’s applications havebeen denied at higher rates than for men. In theory, online finance should be moreaccessible, but just putting financing out there doesn’t always translate into equal
uptake by men and women.
Third, tailored non-financial services and training opportunities can help women
entrepreneurs. For example, women use less paid advertisement because they are
not clear on how the return-on-investment works.
Alongside access to digital tools, access to finance is also key. First, we have beenvery focused on financing through microfinance institutions and SME credit, but wehave not deployed a gender overlay on more sophisticated finance products —social bonds or housing finance, for example. We need to look at different financing
instruments and ask how they are advancing women entrepreneurs.
Second, insurance is a critical enabler of taking business risks. The insurance
industry needs to be more aware of the multiple roles that women have andunderstand that this might result in vastly different insurance requirements for
women compared with their male customers.
Beyond access to finance and digital tools, care is a vital third dimension. It is
encouraging to see the international community focusing on care because this is
critical for both formally employed and self-employed women. We can throw all thefinance we like at the problem, but without a rebalance of where women canphysically spend their time, there will be no significant change in their experience ofentrepreneurship. Reproductive rights are similarly important: if women can’t decide
when and if to have kids, they cannot make the best decisions about theirbusinesses.
Moreover, we must think about building communities: women are less mobile, lessconnected, and more isolated. To tackle this, we need to look at the legal
framework. According to the Women, Business and the Law 2022 report, only 12
countries have complete legal parity across all economic participation indicators
measured.

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Coming back to the funding gap, do you think we need a fundamentallydifferent approach for emerging and developing markets than for advanced
economies?
Overall, this depends on the macroeconomic outlook. There is already a two-track
recovery between emerging and developed economies, with developed markets
recovering more quickly. One needs to account for the fact that what is doable in the
Kenyan context, for example, is different from what is doable in the U.K. context.
Effective interventions to closing economic gender gaps include the collection ofnational gender-disaggregated data, for example through central banks. This allows
us to better identify gender gaps and tailor public and private sector solutions toaddressing them. The evidence base is often lacking because countries orcompanies might produce one-off reports and then it is business as usual.
Second is to decide if new financial products are needed or if it is just a matter of
tweaking existing products to better fit into the women’s market segment and speak
to women’s needs. Third is to look at distribution channels and how gender
intelligent the salesforce are, to examine if they are able to communicate
opportunities in an appropriate form. Fourth, goals and targets must be set andprogress against them reported to show that gender-smart finance is a part of thecore business plan. We must also think about gender-plus-others, to bring in other
underserved groups.
Moreover, you cannot be the insurer, bank, or investor of choice if you are not alsointernally aligned with your own diversity and inclusion plans. If we don’t walk thetalk on that issue internally, then it makes it difficult to argue for that elsewhere.
IFC conducted research with Village Capital and found that investor bias isinfluencing the gender-financing gap, and that accelerators and investors should
pursue strategies to mitigate that bias, which could include rethinking how investors
make investment decisions, such as addressing the methodology or criteria, and
who is at the decision-making table.
IFC has therefore just launched ScaleX, which is an incentive grant for accelerators
to help get more start-up capital to women entrepreneurs. That’s important because
the lack of funds is just so stark at this stage — for all women entrepreneurs acrossthe world.
Do you think we need to completely change the capital raising landscape tomake it more open and accessible for diverse founders?
There is a very direct correlation: the more women you have in investment decisionmaking roles, the more funding goes to women entrepreneurs. IFC looked at private
equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) in emerging markets to examine the correlation
between investment decision-making and the portfolio itself. We found quite astrong link: if a team is gender balanced, meaning at least 30% of either gender,
then 12% of PE/VC investments will go to women entrepreneurs. If there is no
gender balance in investment decision-making, that figure stands at just 7%. Therealso needs to be retention, cultivation and promotion of female talent at the fundlevel, most firms are far away from gender parity.
IFC has a target to ensure women are better represented at the senior leadershiplevel: at least 50% of women must be nominated by IFC where IFC has an equity
investment and hence a board seat. We have exceeded that goal ahead of our2030 timeline, but we will continue to try and keep it that way.

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Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions

What is IFC’s approach to women entrepreneurship and has your approachchanged as a result of COVID?
Supporting women entrepreneurship has been the longest running focus for IFC.
The dedicated business line, Banking on Women, has existed since 2010 andinvested over $3.05 billion in women entrepreneurs as of June 30, 2021. A lot ofexperience has been gathered around SME credit and gender-smart advisory
service. IFC also launched during COVID-19 a working capital facility with a gender
focus, as well as made specific trade finance efforts with an effort to better reach
women entrepreneurs.
IFC is aiming to close digital access and usage gaps for women entrepreneurs, inparticular when it relates to goods, services, and labor platforms. We have done sofor example with investment client PickMe in Sri Lanka, where the company has
tried to increase the number of women drivers. They also made efforts to increasesafety features with the intent to attract more women riders as they understood thatwomen place a premium on safety.
We are also working on building the technical capacity of incubators andaccelerators to help women entrepreneurs, and we invest in funds that commit to
expanding their portfolio investments to women-owned and led companies. We are
active members of the 2X Collaborative just like Citi, which accelerates gender lensinvesting through new partnerships and best practice models.
IFC also doubled down in its efforts to tackle gender-based violence andharassment, as this problem has gotten worse during the pandemic. We engage
with our clients to a build a safer and more inclusive workplace, including tackling
gender-based violence and sexual harassment through a mix of policies, programs,
and practices.
Can you share with us some best practice gender-smart solutions, especiallyin the private sector?
There are many! One good example is the Bank of Palestine. The bank received aninvestment from IFC focused on financing women entrepreneurs. In addition, thebank together with IFC launched a mini-MBA program, which equips female
entrepreneurs with the business and leadership skills they need to expand theirenterprises. In addition, women have the opportunity to boost their confidence,
establish business networks, and access financial products and services that meettheir personal and business needs. The bank also committed to increasing thenumber of women in its workforce and in leadership with astounding results. This
360-degree approach to closing gender gaps across operations isn’t the norm, but it
is what creates a more lasting impact.
One other example is our work in Papua New Guinea, which has a particularly
challenging environment for women. Still, we have seen one of the first EDGE, or
Economic Dividend for Gender Equality, certification in an emerging market context
happening there. We worked with a catering and camp management company
committed to tackling gender equality as a core business output and it received thisinternational seal of accreditation. This is extremely admirable.

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An Interview with Suzanne Biegel, Co-Founder ofGenderSmart and Founder of Catalyst at Large
Thank you for speaking with us today, Suzanne. How has gender lensinvesting evolved and has COVID-19 had an impact on it?
Investing with a gender lens has been around for a very long time: people havebeen backing women entrepreneurs and thinking about women in supply chains
and women as employees and customers for a while. But we formally named this asa field about a dozen years ago. We started with access to capital for women
entrepreneurs, then we talked about products and services that are good for women
and we looked at gender equity throughout the value chain. Very few people were
doing this. Microfinance was going to women, but considering gender in allinvestment across public and private markets and looking beyond women
entrepreneurship has become more sophisticated over time.

Suzanne Biegel
Co-Founder of GenderSmart

It is frustrating that with all the research and data on funding for women
entrepreneurs, there are still stubborn patterns. We haven't gone much beyond
2.2% of venture capital going to women and so many funds still don't think about
shifting their pipelines, their evaluation criteria, or their approach to what kinds ofcapital to deploy. There is progress, no doubt, but there is obviously more work to
do.

Founder of Catalyst at Large

When I started on my journey more than 20 years ago, there was one publicmarkets fund focused on gender and a handful of venture capital funds and angel
networks backing women entrepreneurs. Equity-based crowdfunding really got
going about a dozen years ago, and women were raising as well as men. When I
started Project Sage with Wharton Social Impact Initiative, tracking gender lensinvesting in 2017, we had 58 funds. Now, we have 206 and I think that represents
maybe half the market. In 2017, $1 billion of capital was being deployed into thoseprivate vehicles. Now, over $6 billion has been raised and $13.2 billion is the totalthat those funds are aiming for. Fund managers are not just focused on backing
women entrepreneurs, but engage in the broader thesis about women, andincreasingly women and all forms of diversity throughout the value chain.
Backing women entrepreneurs is one approach within gender lens investing, andeven within that focus there is a lot of nuance. Some fund managers want to backwomen entrepreneurs that are doing something positive from a social orenvironmental perspective. Others are solving for getting access to capital for
women entrepreneurs and the impact is about access to capital.
The number of women investors is growing much more slowly than I would haveanticipated. We still have a huge need to unlock more capital from women to
women, but there are some leading men who understand why backing women
entrepreneurs is smart. I think of Paul Donovan’s recent book on diversity, or men in
the investment community like Eghosa Omoigui and his venture fund EchoVC
Partners that looks proactively for diverse entrepreneurs. There are men who
understand that women entrepreneurs represent an opportunity for talent andinnovation. It’s not just a women’s thing to get more capital to women — this is an
opportunity for everyone, and a risk to portfolios if you’re not paying attention todiversity — you may be missing the next great innovator or operator andtremendous upside. We need men and women backing women entrepreneurs.

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Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions

COVID-19 has set back so much. Not being able to travel to meet investors hit
everybody, but it hit women more because many weren’t already in the flow ofcapital through networks, and there is so much bias in the system. The lack of afunctioning care economy means that women entrepreneurs have the double role ofrunning their company but also potentially childcare, elder care, or disability care. It
also hit women fund managers in VC, for example, raising capital to deploy towomen entrepreneurs, for similar reasons. Yet the bright spot is that some women,
who are building tech-enabled solutions to the problems that we've been aiming tosolve, thrived. Women who were able to pivot to use digital to deliver their products
and services have also done well. This shows up in edtech, healthtech, ecommerce, and fintech. Access to capital has been a barrier, but others have beenable to show such good traction or have such strong networks that they've beenable to raise capital.
Are gender lens investments primarily going to advanced economies?
There are more funds prioritizing women in North America than in any other regionof the world. But according to Project Sage data, while North America is number
one, Africa is number two, and South and Southeast Asia combined are number
three. Microfinance is the opposite, bigger in emerging economies, but I look at thatas a separate category. We have to be specific about what kinds of entrepreneurs
we’re talking about — not just where they are. You can think about growth stage
businesses, small and growing businesses, normal growth businesses, andsubsistence or necessity-based businesses. And then you can further think about
ones that prioritize on social impact versus ones that prioritize on commercial
growth and those that are a mix. I’m most excited about purpose-driven growthoriented businesses. Institutional investors want growth stage businesses that canreally take advantage of their deal sizes. But if we don’t back the small and growing
businesses, we won’t have those growth stage businesses. There’s a real missing
middle in those seeking $50,000 to $2 million, and one step up from that. We still
have a real challenge in getting this capital to women in emerging economies. And
that means we need also to be backing local women and diverse fund managers
with a commitment to back women entrepreneurs, whatever sector, SDG, or area of
focus they may have. There are some brilliant women fund managers across theglobe that just are having a hard time raising, and they key to getting more women
entrepreneurs funded.
Why should investors apply a gender lens to investing? How do we move thedial on the institutional pools of capital?
We have to talk about both opportunity and risk. On the opportunity side, think
about innovation, access to talent, resilience, and sustainability. Women
entrepreneurs have a differentiated experience and are paying more attention toclimate impacts and sustainability. With lived experience, women really understanddifferent target markets. When you have a woman entrepreneur or women in
leadership, attracting talent and understanding the market are both opportunities.
On the risk side, ignoring women means missing out on innovation and talent.
There are so many women inventors who have designed things that are essential to
our lives today. Women in leadership can attract talent that businesses with a lessdiverse leadership base risk missing out on. Ignoring, for example, gender-based
violence brings reputational risk, as well as physical and operational risk tocompanies seen to be bad actors in this arena. And that has tangible material
impact on productivity, on access to talent, and more.

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I think most people know that in the past few years, high profile cases have brought
this to light — including in the media and tech industries. Then there is a huge riskof missing market opportunities by just not seeing gender differentiated needs andwants — look at the femtech market, or look at the 80% of consumer purchasedecisions that are made by women.
You’ve spoken about the opportunity to integrate gender lens investing withsustainable investing, can you tell us a bit more about this opportunity?
Which sectors do you see the most potential in and how do we make it
happen?
Fundamentally, women in leadership are paying more attention to climate risk andimpacts. So they're thinking about how to build a resilient business given what isgoing on with climate. They're opportunistic in changing processes and they're more
open to shifting. Women are developing innovative climate solutions based on their
lived experience.
One example is Sara Menker, the woman founder of Gro Intelligence. She lives
between New York and Africa. She has an amazing diverse team, and her firmbuilds technology using data and analytics looking at weather and climate patterns,
and feeds it both to Wall Street to make better investment decisions, to those infood value chains to make better business decisions, and to women smallholder
farmers, to make better decisions about what and when to plant, and when storms
or droughts might be coming. I look at people like her, and I think that is theinnovation we want to seize. There is a tremendous amount going on in agriculture.
Another example is Brandi DeCarli of Farm from a Box who has created containerbased, integrated planting, energy, water-smart systems. These shipping containersof sustainable growing environments can be dropped into both emerging anddeveloped markets. Brandi really understands the needs of the farmers, but also thetechnology solutions and how to support people in adopting these products.
In energy, I look at businesses that are co-founded by gender diverse teams, andthey are doing phenomenal things on employment and value chains involving
women. Energy access and affordability not only for homes but for productive use(where energy is key to having a business) is another area. Sustainable foodbrands and supply chain tech also see a lot of activity. There are several exciting
private equity and venture capital funds in this area that really understand themarket opportunities associated with alternative proteins and plant-based foods.
Sustainable packaging, sustainable transportation, and sustainable housing arethree more areas. Women innovators and entrepreneurs are working across every
category. There's good data showing that when you have more women in
leadership, you get better climate outcomes, better innovation outcomes and better
financial outcomes. That's the value proposition there.
Some are not noticing these opportunities because many conversations on climate
have been about the big technical bets like geoengineering or carbon capture andstorage. But we need climate solutions at all levels. We need to look at womencoming up with brilliant solutions that can scale, but also solutions that will scale byreplication. So if somebody comes up with an innovation that can be used bymillions of smallholder farmers, it's not necessarily going to be a big, sexy tech play,
but it may be a solution for women farmers that is going to transform agriculture,
one of the biggest areas of climate impact. I also want to say that we need to makegood gender analysis and engagement a part of ESG writ large and therefore acore component of the trillions of dollars that are going into ESG vehicles.

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Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions

Do you think it’s a problem that the asset management industry operates withsuch a broad range of definitions for gender lens investing?
It's complicated, and I probably have helped to complicate it. When we started out, I
just called it investing in women, and women as investors. Then about a dozen
years ago Criterion Institute reframed it as Gender Lens Investing. We named
GenderSmart in 2018, as the name of our Summit. Some wanted their teams andfunds to be “gender-smart,” and we started thinking that people and teams could be“gender-smart” and that you could use a “gender lens” in your investment thesis andprocess. It is complicated that we have so many different definitions. I also think thatintersectionality — with race, ethnicity, cultural background is now becoming more
explicit and that is a good thing. Some people think it is about getting more women
on boards. Others think that it means getting more women into leadership. Yetothers think it's about backing more women entrepreneurs. Others look at the
impact on stakeholders from a gender perspective. It would be valuable if people
were explicit about what they mean: if their goal is getting more women on boards,
that's great but I would say it is not enough. If it’s getting more access to capital for
women entrepreneurs, that's great, and what are those entrepreneurs doing? If it’slooking at gender across the whole value chain or looking at products and services
and where revenue comes from, that's great. The “how” matters as much as the“what.”
What we do need, though, is more standards that can be integrated into
mainstream investment industry standards. In the ESG standards that are evolving,
the gender in the S of ESG, is quite weak in terms of prominence as well as datacollection and reporting. If we want to shift big pools of capital, we need a common
definition of what the S is in ESG. We need a common definition of what sexdisaggregated data should be captured and disclosed, and how to use it to makeinvestment decisions. For example, MSCI said we should look at women on boards
and in leadership. Equileap instead suggested 19 variables, which gives a moresophisticated view. As an investor, I'm more interested in a deeper understanding of
where gender plays out in the policies and practices of a company, in how smart
they are about their customers and their business relationships, how the policies
and practices affect how safe people feel working in that company, which we know
drives business performance. Those things come from culture change but also
policies and practices. It’s a problem that some think gender lens investing is aboutbacking women entrepreneurs — because it is so much more. But if backing more
women entrepreneurs is a route to solving the things we're aiming for, let's focus on
this opportunity.
At GenderSmart, we talk about intentionally investing with a gender lens andinvesting with a gender lens in an integrated way. So intentional investing is
allocating specific capital for women entrepreneurs or companies with more womenin governance and leadership, or where the employment picture is better for
women. Integration is looking at gender patterns across every investment andspotting opportunities and risk by acting on that. Just because you back a woman
entrepreneur does not mean that company's going to be better for women. And justbecause you back a business run by men over a woman-led business doesn't mean
it's not going to be better for women. So it also depends on what your goal is. If yourgoal is getting more capital into the hands of women entrepreneurs, then go for that
goal. But if your goal is women's economic empowerment more broadly, or women'swell-being, then you need to really look at who's running that company and how
they are running it. Similarly, just getting one woman on the board doesn't make adifference. You need more to make a difference.

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We know that gender balanced teams outperform either all women or all men: it's
diversity that is the real dividend and this is not denigrating women entrepreneurs or
all women teams. When I'm backing an all women team, I will often be the one tobring up the suggestion to add more men to the team.
What would be your advice for investors and businesses who are at the
beginning of their gender-smart journey?
If they are focused on women entrepreneurs, and I hope I’ve just helped people toexpand their definition, here are some thoughts. First is to really reflect on theirgoals. What are they aiming to accomplish by looking at women-led and co-foundedbusinesses? Whatever they are leading with, climate, health, tech, etc., investors
must ask where paying attention to gender would be helpful. If getting more accessto capital to women entrepreneurs is the core thesis, they have to ask in whichareas, and that might be geography-focused, a thematic focus, a business model
approach. Whatever it is, think about what the criteria are.
Next is to open the pipeline and really examine where they will find thesebusinesses. There are now many more accelerators and incubators than 20 years
ago; there are women angel networks or networks of both men and women paying
attention to women entrepreneurs. There are awards and competitions where
women entrepreneurs are being highlighted. Read about people like Geri Stengel at
Ventureneer, and about All Raise, which is a fantastic collective in the U.S. And ofcourse, GenderSmart. There are people who are constantly spotlighting this. Then
think about where to find other investors with an aligned thesis. That might beinvesting in a venture fund with a particular focus — Project Sage and other lists are
spotlighting these kind of funds — or finding co-investors in the peer group to get
access to the deal flow. Think about the asset class you’re really interested in. If you
want to do really early stage, there's a whole set of funds andincubators/accelerators for that. If you want to do growth stage, there's a wholeother pool. If you want to be in inclusive finance, there are fantastic funds there.
The other thing is just to jump in: don’t over agonize and don’t overthink it. If you
want to deploy capital and you’re lacking women entrepreneurs in the pipeline, think
about how you’re going to get access to that pipeline. Then check your own
assumptions for biases to really think about whether you have unconscious bias
when you look at women entrepreneurs: think about the questions you ask, how you
interpret the answers, and how you are reading the room. That’s also really
important: it is not just opening the pipeline, but reconsidering investment
processes.
What's next for gender lens investing? If we were to have this conversation
again in another 20 years, what do you think or what do you hope we would
be discussing?
I would hope that women entrepreneurs and male entrepreneurs at that point haveequal access to funding, that venture funds led by women are fully funded at thelevel that others are, that all venture funds and all private equity funds would have agender and diversity lens integrated into what they're doing. And that those closest
to the problems we’re aiming to solve have a real seat at the table in equitable
investment decisions. I hope that people would see visibly the dynamic
entrepreneurs and innovators who have solved the problems that we've been trying
to solve for these 20 years. That is the real opportunity — to leverage talentcollectively on real problems.

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Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions

I truly hope we’ll be beyond people asking questions about the business case forgender lens investing; this should by then just be seen as smart investing. I hope
50% of the people in allocation positions would be women and when women
entrepreneurs are going for their capital, they see a gender-balanced team making
the investment decisions.
In terms of where the field is going, we need the institutional players to wake up andsee that this is an opportunity and to pay attention to the risk of not doing this. We
need to see women investors taking their power and using their capital to invest
with their values and their intelligence, and consciously invest in the world that theywant to see. We need people in the advisory community, whether that's in a wealthmanagement firm or a consulting firm, to be part of the solution, and to be fully
equipped to advise their clients and look at this incredible opportunity. We need touse data in an intelligent way to make these investment decisions, so that we're,again, not leading from a biased place but really leading from the data that is telling
us why and how to make these kinds of investments. And right now we need to getthat $13 billion of capital that's being sought fully funded. Then I really want to see
financial institutions of the world open up those doors for clients to be able to tap
into that pool of innovation. In the shorter term, I'm looking forward seeing whatbanks do to open up more capital, not only through lending but also building,offering, and getting clients into other structured vehicles.
Part of my vision for gender lens investing is that a lot more people will be using
diverse tools for backing women entrepreneurs, fund managers, and asset
managers. One of the things I'm most excited about right now is those fundmanagers and investors who are deploying capital appropriately by working
together with the entrepreneur to get them the right kind of capital. Investors need tobe more responsive to the flavors of capital that women entrepreneurs need.
Investors must recognize that what a normal growth business or what a strong
cashflow-based business might need can differ from what a high growth, high techbusiness needs. I think that's one of the things that's been broken is that we try toforce women entrepreneurs into getting all the same flavor of capital. So if you're abank, it's always the same kind of bank debt. If you're a venture capitalist, it's thesame kind of venture capital. We need to expand our financial tools — including
democratization of who gets to be an investor and who is at the table in investment
decisions. I’m really excited about the innovation starting here. I could share many
more thoughts about what gender lens investing then looks at beyond the women
entrepreneur space. These are just some of the shifts that I hope to see.

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Solutions to Unlock the Potential of
Women Entrepreneurs“Female entrepreneurs need a seat at thesame table just as other entrepreneurs andbe offered the opportunity to network, joinboards, and secure investment from the top
VCs not as a separate fund, but as a secure
way to balance a funds’ investments!”– Michelle Beyo, Founder and CEO of
FINAVATOR

In this report, we have sought to shine a light on women entrepreneurship in order
to raise awareness, examine the barriers that women entrepreneurs face, assess
the opportunities in closing the gender gap, and present a set of recommendations
on how we can unlock the potential. Research consistently demonstrates thatwomen entrepreneurs encounter gender-related barriers and constraints in startingand growing their business. There is also growing evidence that when women
entrepreneurs are given access to the same resources as men, they and theirbusinesses thrive and may even become more profitable. Put simply, there is asignificant gap between potential and reality, and the full economic potential ofwomen-owned and led businesses remains undervalued and untapped.
We recognize that women entrepreneurs are not a homogenous group and every
woman has a different lived experience, but many face common challenges, which
we have categorized as access to finance and participation in public life andbusiness ecosystems. Many of these barriers are amplified and more acute inemerging and developing economies, and studies have shown that the COVID-19
pandemic has disproportionately impacted women entrepreneurs in developing
economies.
We have also discussed the many opportunities and benefits that can be unlocked
by women entrepreneurship. It is a powerful poverty alleviation tool, especially indeveloping economies, but support should not stop after helping women start theirbusiness, which is often the case in low/lower-middle-income countries, but should
extend to helping them grow their business. Across both advanced and emerging
economies, the gap between women’s and men’s participation gets bigger throughthe entrepreneurship pipeline, and our analysis has found that achieving parity inbusiness growth can deliver substantial global growth. We should also notunderestimate the potential of women entrepreneurs in tackling global challenges
such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as empowering women
entrepreneurs is itself an exercise in development given the multiplier effect it has
across their families and communities. Women are untapped sources of knowledge,
perspective, and innovation but continue to be underrepresented in leadership andinnovation around the world. If we want to accelerate solutions to global challenges,
such as climate change, we believe a key first step should be tackling the genderdisparity in entrepreneurship.
There is also a strong business case for women entrepreneurship and women’s
economic empowerment more broadly. For example, gender-smart and diverse
supply chains can help businesses build resilience, sustainability, and growth; andwomen-owned/led businesses also represent attractive business opportunities forfinancial institutions. We explored the role of women entrepreneurs in women’s
growing wealth and the opportunities for creating a virtuous circle in women’s
wealth creation and management. The rise of gender lens investing is anencouraging and exciting trend that we discussed in detail with global expert
Suzanne Biegel who sees a future where people no longer ask questions about thebusiness case for gender lens investing, but instead how to deploy more capital inthis direction.

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Unlocking the potential of women
entrepreneurs requires tackling the nexus ofchallenges they face

However, in order to unlock the potential of women entrepreneurship around theworld, we need to break down the multitude of barriers shown above. Access tofinance is a major constraint, and we invite our colleagues Ronit Ghose and Ronak
Shah from Citi Global Insights’ Future of Finance team to provide their expert
opinions on solutions.

Solutions for Improving Access to FinanceRonit Ghoseand
Ronak ShahDavid Malpass, the President of the World Bank Group, recently said, “Removing
regulatory barriers along with obstacles to access to finance and markets can give
women-led businesses the opportunity to succeed.” So, how can we improveaccess to capital and financing for women entrepreneurs to start, run, and expand
their businesses?

Citi Global Insights, Future of Finance team Collateralize cash flows, not assets: Data shows about 79% of loans or linesof credit require collateral.195 Moreover, historically banks are reluctant to accept
movable properties e.g., machinery, receivables, or stock of goods as collateraland insist on immovable properties like land, houses and offices. Men are more
likely to own a property than women.196 This is due to factors such as unequal
legal and inheritance rights towards women, and unpaid domestic work. There isa strong case to consider alternate means to secure a loan, e.g., cash flows frombusiness.
 Build capacity: Most banks employ more senior men than women. As a result,financial institutions may miss the opportunity to fully understand the needs ofwomen entrepreneurs. Banks need to train loan officers to evaluate womenowned businesses, hire more female bankers to better serve women businessowners to enhance their comfort in dealing with the bank and improve access tofinance, especially in more traditional societies where socio-religious factors may
prevent women from interacting in traditionally “male” spaces.
 Break the biases: Lenders and investors perceive women-led enterprises to berisky due to smaller size, and limited/no collateral, and subject them to questions
that are less relevant to their business or the capital raising process. However,
women have demonstrated reliable credit repayment behavior relative to men, as
data shows non-performing loans are 30%-50% lower in women-owned
businesses.197
 Avoid affinity: There is an unbreakable link between funders and founders.

Venture capital (VC) funds invest based on familiarity. According to Crunchbase,
92% of partners at the biggest VC firms in the U.S. are men and are reluctant toinvest in start-ups led by female founders.198 VC firms and other investors shouldseek to avoid the affinity that spurs them to invest in people and products that arefamiliar to them.

195 See the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys.
196 Isis Gaddis, Rahul Lahoti, and Hema Swaminathan, Women’s Legal Rights andGender Gaps in Property Ownership in Developing Countries, World Bank, Policy
Research Working Paper 9444, 2020.
197 International Finance Corporation, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise Finance;
Improving Access to Finance for Women-Owned Business in India,” 2017.
198 Michael Ewens and Richard R. Townsend, "Are Early Stage Investors Biased Against
Women?" Journal of Financial Economics, 135, no. 2 (March 2020): 653-677.

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 Startup accelerators: Accelerators and other organizations that promote start-

ups must ensure that they have a gender-balanced application pipeline and do
so by actively recruiting promising women entrepreneurs. Additionally,
accelerators should ensure they have sufficient numbers of women experts
across industries and can act as role models and mentors. A good example is
IFC’s ScaleX, as we discussed with Henriette Kolb.
 Women as part of the reform: Improving access to finance for women

entrepreneurs also includes involving women in the reform process, which helps
ensure that issues relevant to women entrepreneurs are addressed and voiced
through regulatory policies that improve their access to finance.

Can FinTechs Fuel Female Entrepreneurship?
Despite all the constraints (e.g., social, capital, education) for female entrepreneurs,
the percentage of FinTechs with at least one female founder has improved nearly 2x
over the past decade (Figure 51), especially in 2020, when pandemic-induced
hardships accelerated women entrepreneurship and digital adoption. Globally, amere 4% of female executives in FinTech serve as chief technology or innovation
officers at FinTech companies.199 Interestingly, FinTechs outside of the U.S. andEurope are displaying better gender diversity, e.g., there are 2.5x more womenCEOs in the Middle East vs. Europe and 2x more CTOs in Africa versus the global
average.200
Figure 51. Share of FinTechs With at Least One Female Founder (%)
30%

30%
25%

2x

20%
15%

15%

10%
5%
0%
2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

Source: findexable Global FinTech Diversity Radar 2021,Citi Global Insights

We have observed women in FinTechs represent a wide range of verticals, i.e.,
payments, banking, savings, even cryptocurrency and decentralized finance (DeFi).
After a 30-year career in banking at some of the world’s major banks, including
Lloyds TSB, Allied Irish Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland, Anne Boden’s techknowledge led her to build Starling Bank from scratch. Anne is proud of the fact thatwomen represent 42% of her executive team and 40% of the board at Starling. She
believes women in FinTech still find themselves with more to prove, but the industry
is slowly waking up to the benefits of gender diversity.
Halima Iqbal, co-founded Oraan to help increase financial accessibility for women
entrepreneurs in Pakistan who otherwise would depend on family and friends andmay not meet their financing needs. While Halima is optimistic about the future offemale entrepreneurship, she believes a collective effort by society is needed tomake education, health, finance, jobs, and entrepreneurship accessible for all.

199 findexable, Fintech Diversity Radar – Diversity for Growth, November 2021.
200 Ibid; Citi Global Insights.

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Upasana Taku, co-founded MobiKwik (a digital wallet) back in 2009, when India wasalmost completely a cash economy. Upasana recalls everyone advising against
starting the entrepreneurial journey, but she was confident that digital would bemainstream in the years to come. That belief helped scale MobiKwik to 120 million
registered users and offer them multiple financial products and services.

Diversity and inclusion is not just the right thing to do, it has great financial andbusiness outcomes and results. Sometimes we don’t link financial success of acompany with a diverse workforce. But there’s a lot of data out there thatabsolutely links them.
– ANNETTE EVANS, CPO, GLOBAL PROCESSING SERVICES

Digital Inclusion Promise Unfulfilled, So Far
The underlying aim of FinTech was to digitally deliver financial inclusion to those
who are unserved or underserved and close the gender gap that was left
unaddressed by traditional financial institutions for years.
However, analysis from the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) highlights thegender gap for access to financial services when scaled for their adoption rates
equals 10% for traditional financial institutions versus 32% for FinTechs. So far,
FinTechs have failed to deliver on their promise to close the gender gap in access tofinancial services (see Figure 52).
Figure 52. The FinTech Gender Gap, by Country

Source: BIS Working Papers No. 931, The FinTech Gender Gap. Note: Full publications are available on the BIS
website free of charge at www.bis.org.

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In low- and middle-income countries, the gender gap in mobile ownership is at 7%with greater disparities in South Asia (19%) and Sub-Saharan Africa (13%).
Furthermore, the gender gap for mobile internet usage is at 15%.201 Enabling themobile and internet economy for women could unlock the women entrepreneurial
landscape (see Figure 53).
Figure 53. Closing the Gender Gap in Mobile Ownership and Internet Usage Could Enable Women Entrepreneurship

East Asia &Pacific

39%

31% Europe &Central Asia

Overall

Sub-SaharanAfrica23%
South Asia
MENA

Firms with female participation in ownership(% of firms)

Firms with female participation in ownership(% of firms)

LatAm
47%

Correlation 'R' = -75%

55%

Correlation 'R' = -76%

55%

LatAm
47%

East Asia &Pacific

39%

31%

Europe &Central Asia

Sub-SaharanAfricaOverall

23%
MENA

South Asia

15%
15%
-4%

0%
0%

4%

8%

12%

16%

10%

20%

30%

40%

20%

Gender gap in mobile ownership (%)

Gender gap in mobile internet use (%)

Source: World Bank Gender Data, GSMA, Citi Global Insights. Note: Data for low- and middle-income countries.

Mobile phones are the primary distribution/delivery channel for FinTech products.
Hence, digital inclusion remains the key to financial inclusion of women as itenhances access to income and assets, grants control over economic gains, andthe power to make financial decisions.
In 2020, the World Bank and UPS announced a new partnership to help women
entrepreneurs in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region to grow theirbusinesses by assisting them in successfully leveraging e-commerce platforms.202
The project will support an estimated 750 women entrepreneurs and will train acadre of e-commerce advisors in each country who can provide tailored assistanceand coaching to businesses. UPS will provide e-learning modules on different ecommerce topics to help women-owned and women-led small and medium
enterprises seeking to expand their businesses across borders.

By making e-commerce platforms more accessible, this partnership addresses a
key constraint faced by women business leaders in reaching new markets. Ecommerce platforms create opportunities, and we must ensure theseopportunities are open to women-owned businesses across the region.
– FERID BELHAJ, WORLD BANK MENA VICE PRESIDENT

201 GSMA, Connected Women: The Mobile Gender Gap Report 2021, 2021.
202 World Bank, "World Bank Group Launches Initiatives Supporting Women

Entrepreneurs," press release, February 16, 2020.

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Technology with gender-focused policies could help resolve the existing biases andgaps to financially empower women. It is definitely a long road to closing thesegender gaps but FinTechs can tread these choppy waters with ease.

Recommendations for Financial Institutions
Role of financial institutions

Financial institutions — including microfinance initiatives, banks, venture capital andprivate equity firms, and institutional investors — will be key to unlocking theopportunities around women entrepreneurs. We outline key recommendations forfinancial institutions in Figure 54.

Figure 54. Key Recommendations for Financial Institutions

Barriers

Recommendations
Recognize the business opportunity of financing women-owned businesses while understanding the challenges
of unlocking this opportunity from inside traditional lending and investing practices.
Collect gender-disaggregated data across all stages of the customer cycle, but especially on lending andinvestment portfolios. Ensure this data is also disaggregated by other diversity metrics including disability
status, ethnicity, region, and level of education, amongst other factors relevant to individual contexts. Lenders
should publish this data and investors should ask for it before committing capital.
Design new products and services that align with the needs of women entrepreneurs — for example, supplychain financing for sectors and business models common among women entrepreneurs — or that help them tomeet the requirements of financial institutions — for example, savings products to help women establish afinancial track record.

Access tofinance

Evaluate credit policies and credit scoring models, including automated or algorithmic evaluations,(a) tounderstand why women entrepreneurs disproportionately fail to meet lending criteria. Reduce reliance on
collateralized borrowing and innovate new ways to understand and manage the risks of women-led
businesses. Broaden lending criteria to account for non-traditional credit histories and data points, including
deposit history, psychometric screening, or evaluations of business potential.
Innovate and apply a gender lens to investment instruments and vehicles, for example integrate sustainable
investing with gender lens investing.
Ensure that initiatives aimed at supporting start-ups are inclusive in their delivery, e.g., delivering incubators
and accelerators with remote participation options or in family-friendly settings.
Take banking services beyond the walls of a ‘”bank,” which in some markets are perceived to be amore “masculine” space. Meet women entrepreneurs where they are, both physically in space andmetaphorically in their business development cycles.
Recognize associations and local networks of women entrepreneurs: listen to and learn from them, believe
their expert testimony, and act on their recommendations. Collaborate with them to clear the pathways for
women-led businesses to flourish.

Participation in
public life andbusiness
ecosystems

Set targets for the inclusion of women entrepreneurs and report on progress against them. Investors should ask
for data on both targets and progress.
Support women employees and invest in talent to improve the gender balance of the financial services industry
from investors to credit officers and commercial bankers to asset management advisors.
Improve collaboration with partners, including NGOs and public sector actors, on coordinated support
packages for women entrepreneurs across the axes of access to finance, training, and networking.

(a) Sonja Kelly and Mehrdad Mirpourian, Algorithmic Bias, Financial Inclusion and Gender, Women’s World Banking, 2021. Note: Recommendations that are especially relevant
for emerging markets are highlighted in red.
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Re-evaluate credit scoring and lending
policies

One key step for financial institutions involves reevaluating their credit policies andcredit scoring models, including automated and algorithmic decision-makers. If
women continue to fail these checks despite evidence showing they are more likely
to repay their loans, financial institutions should seek to understand why womenbusiness borrowers struggle to meet their criteria. An over-reliance on collateralizedborrowing might be the reason and, as our Citi colleagues suggested above,
improving financial institutions’ offering of credit products based on cash-flow
lending, or enhancing the data input to credit scoring to include psychometric tests,
deposit history, and evaluation of business potential rather than track record would
all help route funding to women-led businesses.

Innovate investment vehicles across asset
classesBeyond banks, the financial community must continue to innovate and apply agender lens to its investments, including integrating sustainable investing withgender lens investing. Lenders and investors of all kinds should innovate andproduce new product offerings tailored to women entrepreneurs’ businesses. As
Suzanne Biegel noted in our interview with her on page 104, it will not be enough tosimply make available the same financing to all women entrepreneurs. Rather,investors and lenders should work with entrepreneurs to address the kind of financethey require access to and innovate ways of providing it. One example here isblended financing which brings together philanthropic, first-loss risk capital withlayers of debt and equity financing with varying returns profiles. This might be a
successful way of expanding funding to women entrepreneurs, especially inemerging markets.203 It requires not only innovation on the part of financial
institutions but also collaboration and partnerships with NGOs and public sector
actors working to support women entrepreneurs. As well as innovating their productoffering, financial institutions should also innovate how they interact withentrepreneurs in the start-up ecosystem with the aim to make their offerings more
inclusive. For example, incubators and accelerators must be sensitive to thecommitments that might make it difficult for some entrepreneurs, especially womenwith caring responsibilities, to participate in their programs, which often require
living in a different city for an intense period of participation in an initiative.
Alternative offerings with remote provision or family-friendly settings will be vital todrive the participation of women entrepreneurs in these initiatives.
We saw in previous chapters that increasing the number of women investors is
critical to improving the level of finance flowing to women entrepreneurs. This issomething that financial institutions of all kinds are well placed to address: all kindsof investment vehicles and institutions providing advisory services should seek torecruit, develop, and promote female talent. This stands across the industry fromventure capitalists to commercial bankers and credit officers to wealth management
roles. These efforts need to extend right to the most senior positions at financial
institutions, increasing the number of women in check-writing positions and on
funds’ investment committees. All of this will help to create a more gender-balanced
ecosystem and help women to seek financing from the industry.

Changemakers are already disrupting theventure capital industry

Some organizations are already working to improve access to finance for women
entrepreneurs and it is important to note that we are not starting from nothing andthere is much to learn from existing efforts. January Ventures is a fund disrupting
the venture capital industry by removing the need for a so-called “warmintroduction.” Instead, they allow cold pitches, submitted through a form on theirwebsite without requiring a pitch deck.

203 Suzanne Biegel, “Project Sage 4.0: Alternative Finance Trends in Gender Lens

Funds and Why They Matter,” LinkedIn, February 9, 2022.

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They also publish the questions that will be asked of founders ahead of time,
removing the possibility for women to be asked different questions and putting all
founders on a closer to level playing field. Maren Bannon, the Founder of January
Ventures told us, “The need for a warm introduction has historically held backunderrepresented founders.” January Ventures is also developing a network ofinvestors with whom they can connect founders for subsequent funding rounds.
There are other examples of funds doing things differently: Loyal VC hasabandoned traditional methods in order to do better business — they have
improved the diversity of their portfolio relative to industry averages in the process.
Investors at Loyal VC do not make snap judgements based on a pitch — thetraditional method that they think results in biased thinking. Instead, they invest asmall amount in the beginning and decide after a period of working with theentrepreneur whether to continue. This has resulted in over 30% of the portfolio
being led by women CEOs — a figure they note is 10x the industry average.204
Village Capital has also moved away from the traditional methods of the industry:
participants in the accelerator program do not pitch to investors for funding but
instead determine who among the cohort should be allocated funds. The result has
been a portfolio comprised of 42% women founders and 29% founders of color.205
In both of these cases, diversity has been an outcome of efforts to improve
investment selection processes to back more successful businesses.
We spoke to Juliet Bailin of General Catalyst, a fund with a racial and social justicestrategy, who told us about the fund’s approach to pitches: “swarms” ensure that
entrepreneurs never meet with only one investor. Juliet told us that that meeting ingroups helps investors average out their biases which may be connected to identity
or even previous investment performance and ensure that investment decisions are
as free from bias as possible. We were also encouraged by the investment thesis of
Springbank Collective, a venture and growth equity firm that is investing ininfrastructure and solutions that support all women and working families across thethemes of Career, Care, and Consumer. There is a lot of discussion around thedisproportionate amount of time women spend on unpaid care work — often called
women’s “second shift” — but there is far less attention on the opportunity to build
solutions beyond policy. In conversation, Courtney Leimkuhler, Founding Partner ofSpringbank Collective, reframed this as a huge and exciting white space,highlighting for example the $648 billion opportunity the Care economy offers andthe growing community of entrepreneurs building solutions in the family technology(“famtech”) space.206
There are changemakers across thebusiness growth spectrum

Outside venture capital, Balloon Ventures helps high potential entrepreneurs inemerging economies to grow their microenterprises into small and medium-sizedenterprises (SMEs), filling the “missing middle” of SMEs in low-income countries
and creating jobs in the process. Balloon Ventures provides both training andfinancing to entrepreneurs running microenterprises who often struggle to accessfinance as traditional lenders are unable to lend to them. TechnoServe is anothernon-profit organization operating 30 entrepreneurship development programs
across 20 countries. They help entrepreneurs in low- and middle-income countries
find untapped demand in their local markets as well as provide relevant training tobuild capacity and develop business growth among entrepreneurs.

204 Loyal VC, accessed February 28, 2022.
205 Alana Matos, “How to Build a More Inclusive Pipeline for VC Investments,” Forbes,

February 12, 2018.
206 The Holding Co. and Pivotal Ventures, The Investor’s Guide to the Care Economy:

Four Dynamic Areas of Growth, 2021.

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At the other end of the business growth spectrum, PWP Forward Acquisition Corp
I similarly aims to improve the access women-forward businesses have to publicmarkets and to draw attention to the opportunities they present.

PWP Forward Acquisition Corporation I (PFAC)
Stacia Ryan — CEO, PFAC
The lack of financing available to women-led businesses does not stop at the venture capital and private equity stage —women are also hugely underrepresented in public markets. A 2021 report noted that only 30% of board seats among
S&P 500 companies were filled by women. Of new board appointments, 43% were female, driving a marked
improvement from a figure of 16% a decade ago. However, this is still a significant distance from parity. Only 31
companies (6.2%) in the index are led by women CEOs.207 Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs), whichhave seen a boom in recent years, show even worse gender statistics: of the SPACs that filed in the 12 months to
December 2020, less than 16% of board seats were filled by women, with half of these blank-check companies nothaving a single woman board member.208
PFAC CEO and Perella Weinberg Partners (PWP) Partner, Stacia Ryan, the leader at one SPAC filed in 2021, sees
“women-forward companies” — those founded by, led by, or enriching the lives of women — as an area of significant
opportunity. 209 PFAC is a blank-check company with a mission to improve public market access for women-forward
companies and to draw attention to the opportunities they present, driving an increase in equity capital flow into thesebusinesses and accelerating their growth. PFAC itself has a woman CEO, and women make up the majority of both theboard and the advisory board. The vehicle is also supported by women-led professional services teams across legal,
audit, and underwriting. PFAC believes that being women-forward itself makes it a compelling, like-minded partner for
high-potential, women-forward businesses.
CEO Stacia Ryan tells us that PFAC is part of a growing movement around supporting women, with investors, boards,
and governments increasingly focusing on ESG and diversity and inclusion. “This is a movement, not a moment,” shestates. But this is more than a social imperative. Not only should women entrepreneurs have equal access to publicmarkets, there is a substantial, and too often overlooked, economic opportunity around women-forward businesses. As
Stacia notes, successful investments in women build momentum for other women, and women-forward companies
represent a substantial and growing addressable market that is not currently being fully realized. PFAC is grounded in
the well-established view that women-forward enterprises, especially those represented by women at all levels of theorganization, outperform their less diverse peers.
As the first SPAC with a women-forward mission, PFAC is focused on opening the door to more inclusive capital flows.
Stacia concludes, “We believe we can begin to address the funding gap for private, women-focused businesses andinspire and enable other women to seek greater participation in public financial markets.”

207 “Women CEOs of the S&P 500 (List)”, Catalyst, accessed February 23, 2022;

Spencer Stuart, 2021 U.S. Spencer Stuart Board Index, 2021.
208 Crystal Tse and Mathieu Benhamou, “In Record-Breaking Year, SPACs Avoid
Gender Diversity Push,” Bloomberg, December 4, 2020.
209 Note: Citi acted as a bookrunner for the SPAC, which was sponsored by Perella
Weinberg Partners.

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Organizations provide training, mentoring,and network opportunities to women-led
businesses

There are many other organizations seeking to diversify entrepreneurship beyond
setting up a new fund. Addressing the problem from another angle, Blackstone is
growing a network of women entrepreneurs and helping women-led businesses toraise capital in the process. Joan Solotar, Global Head of Blackstone Private Wealth
Solutions, told us, “Blackstone is investing in several visionary female entrepreneurs
whose businesses are creating new categories and reshaping the economy. By
enabling these businesses — including Whitney Wolfe Herd’s Bumble; Reese
Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine; Sara Blakely’s SPANX; and Holly Thaggard’s
Supergoop! — to realize their full potential, we’ve catalyzed an organic network
effect. As our network grows, the aperture for investment opportunities in female-led
businesses we see at Blackstone widens.
It’s also created opportunities for the female entrepreneurs in our ecosystem toinvest in one other. Most recently, Whitney Wolf Herd and Reese Witherspoon coinvested alongside Blackstone’s investment in SPANX, which was led by an allfemale deal team.” Improving networks of women entrepreneurs is also a key
initiative for many other organizations supporting women entrepreneurs.
The Founding Partners of Sie Ventures describe how they worked pro bono withwomen entrepreneurs supporting them through their fundraising journeys before
building Sie. Today, Sie Ventures runs an annual Catalyst Program to address thegender funding gap and drive the growth of female-led technology businesses
through a curated program to drive more capital to female founders, and toaccelerate the growth of their businesses. Triin Linamagi and Nicole Velho shared
their learnings about common obstacles female founders experience whenfundraising, biases in the investment process in venture capital, and what founders
can do to stand better chances raising investment while the industry adapts to
support diversity and inclusion. The team is now raising capital to invest in femaleled companies. What the Founding Partners believe differentiates Sie is its bespoke
approach to each founder, understanding the gaps and areas where they needmore support. It also brings in external experts and works with top-tier venture
capital firms, entrepreneurs, and angel investors to share more knowledge withfounders, and drive more capital to women.
We were struck by the similarities between this approach to helping women raise
venture capital and the participatory approach to intervention design that is used in
the development context, such as the programs of Voluntary Service Overseas(VSO), which helped Evelyn Awuor grow her retail business in Kenya (see page127). VSO is also helping women entrepreneurs access the tools that they need to
grow their business and both VSO and Sie are engaged in similar projects — withprofoundly different women running profoundly different businesses. Similarly, but
focused exclusively on women, the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women works
with women entrepreneurs worldwide so they can reach their full potential. By
working together, the Foundation will eliminate the global gender gap inentrepreneurship.

Inclusive entrepreneurship transcends
questions of gender© 2022 Citigroup

There are changemakers on the investor side, too. GenderSmart, whose cofounder Suzanne Biegel we interviewed above, is another example of anorganization working at the intersection of gender and finance to advance genderequality. This includes supporting women entrepreneurs: as Suzanne told us,
backing women entrepreneurs is an example of gender lens investing. Like for otherchangemakers, networking is a key element of their work — GenderSmart aims toconnect investment professionals and thought leaders with the tools and people
they need to advance their work. As part of this, GenderSmart curates resources
including research and practical guides to help advance gender strategies.

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Further, through their global Summit and a host of working groups, they build
investor capacity in the gender lens field. Their network currently comprises 2,000+
individuals across 50 countries who all have different gender aims and are atdifferent stages in their journey but are united by the belief that deploying gendersmart capital can lead to lasting change around the world.
Another example is Diversity VC, which aims to ensure that tomorrow’s venture
capital system is free from bias. The non-profit partnership runs initiatives toimprove the access that women and minority potential investors have to theindustry, including a paid internship with U.S. and European funds alongsidetraining programs in the form of masterclasses. These masterclasses include
helping interns to “speak the language of venture capital” just as women
entrepreneurs often need to learn.
For Diversity VC’s interns, this is about navigating a way into an investment seat in
the industry where their presence can in turn improve the access that women andminority founders have to capital. This initiative transcends questions of gender:
there are many other axes along which founders face difficulties. The International
Rescue Committee is a valuable changemaker here, helping women
entrepreneurs in conflict or displacement-affected settings, who we saw above faceeven greater difficulties in starting and operating a business, to reignite theirenterprises in a new setting. Their programs also include training and mentoring tobuild the economic wellbeing of refugees.
Many women entrepreneurs are also building businesses that exist to address thechallenges they themselves have faced, and help others to start and grow theirbusinesses. Indeed, for some women entrepreneurs, this serves as a leading
motivation. Our Citi colleagues discussed above the example of Halima Iqbal, whofounded Oraan after observing the difficulties women entrepreneurs faced in
opening a bank account. Another example is Kelly Ifill, Founder and CEO of Guava,
who is building a digital banking and community platform for Black entrepreneurs
and small business owners. With a background in venture capital, Kelly observed
first-hand the challenges faced by Black founders in securing capital and, after
seeing the impact of the pandemic on Black-owned businesses, she founded Guavato address this racial funding gap. In conversation, Kelly noted, “Entrepreneurshipcan be used as a mechanism to close the racial wealth gap.”
We spoke to many of these “changemakers” and were thoroughly impressed andencouraged by their determination and passion to drive positive change. As Stacia
Ryan, CEO of PFAC said, “This is a movement, not a moment.”
Importance of coordinated action acrossbarriers and between stakeholders© 2022 Citigroup

Improving access to finance is essential, but it must also go hand in hand withmeasures that tackle other barriers such as lack of access to markets, training andnetworks, ownership as well as legal inequalities and social norms. We
acknowledge these are not barriers that all women entrepreneurs around the world
face, but are a list of common constraints that should be considered when designingsolutions. It is important that strategies and interventions factor in the local context— where an understanding of what is happening at the local level and why — canhelp to build more targeted and cost-effective solutions that work for each region,community, and client group. The case studies throughout this report help toillustrate this point. Tackling the non-financial barriers requires action and support
from many sectors, and so we have structured our recommendations below basedon “who is best placed to do what.”March 2022

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Citi Initiatives on Women Entrepreneurs
Social FinanceIn October 2021, Citi announced the offering of its inaugural Social Finance Bond — a $1 billion bond that supportssocial-focused development in emerging markets around the world. As part of Citi’s $500 billion goal for social finance,
Citi aims to expand access to essential services for 15 million households, including 10 million women, globally by 2025.
The expansion of Citi Social Finance builds on a 15-year track record of developing new business models that leverage
market-based approaches to improve the livelihoods of low-income communities in emerging markets. To date, these
efforts have reached four million unbanked and underbanked individuals in emerging markets, 3.5 billion of which are
women.

Citi Impact Fund
In early 2020, Citi launched a “double-bottom line” fund that allows Citi investment in U.S. companies that are
addressing societal challenges. The Citi Impact Fund is the largest of its kind to be launched by a bank using its own
capital, and prioritizes companies that are led or owned by women and minorities.
The fund focuses on companies that have demonstrated proof of concept, built an existing customer base, secured priorrounds of funding, and exhibited the potential for scale in multiple markets. A portion of the fund is designatedspecifically for earlier-stage seed investment in businesses led or owned by women and minorities. Of the 13 initialinvestments made through March 2021, the majority of companies are female and/or minority founded.

Citi Ventures
Citi Ventures believes that innovation is driven by diversity of ideas, experiences, and differentiated expertise. Investing
in women goes beyond social impact — it drives economic outcomes. Research continues to show that despite lessaccess to capital, women-owned and women-led firms have yielded a stronger financial performance than firms led
exclusively by men, yet all-female funding teams accessed just over 2% of global venture capital over the last 30 years.
Over the next decade, female founders will be a vital part of the start-up ecosystem and Citi is well-positioned to help
them thrive. Citi Ventures are working with Sie Ventures, a U.K.-based training and mentoring program for women
entrepreneurs with additional efforts around funding women-led businesses. The aim of the collaboration is to makemore investments in women-led businesses by addressing the female-funding gap and powering the growth of female
founders through workshops, office hours, and networking events, which will provide better access to investor networks,
support, and capital.

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Recommendations for Governments
Role of governments

Governments have a key role in improving the context within which women areliving and working, as well as in supporting women entrepreneurs and women
owned businesses. The importance of government action in enabling andsupporting women entrepreneurship is emphasized across the literature, forexample Ascher et al. (2012) observes, “Strengthening female businesses is
contingent on policy measures adopted at national level.” In addition, Professor
Linda Scott notes, “We must begin holding governments and international agencies
to account as well as business; we are in a habit of pointing at corporations andmany of the barriers are for governments and international agencies to solve.”210

Figure 55. Key Recommendations for Governments

Barriers
Access tofinance

Recommendations
Improve laws and policies to end discrimination of women in accessing finance. For example, The Women,
Business and the Law index shows that gender discrimination in access to credit is still permitted in over 50%
of countries which includes advanced and emerging economies.
Strengthen women’s ability to own assets which can be leveraged within the financial system. Improve
collateral registries to help women prove ownership of suitable collateral.
Invest in the education, health, and empowerment of girls and young women, creating a ripple effectacross families, communities and economies (see Citi GPS The Case for Holistic Investment in Girls).
Improve laws and policies to end all discrimination of girls and women and support women’s equal
opportunities.
Improve the availability of child and family care facilities or incentivize a fairer distribution of caring
responsibilities between genders. Consider financially supporting the provision of childcare, especially for low
income entrepreneurs.
Tackle corruption and gender-based violence in business-critical areas, such as ports and customs, toallow women fairer, less dangerous access to these spaces.

Participation in
public life andbusiness
ecosystems

Invest in education and up-skilling for women aligned with market needs to help rebalance the sectoral
allocation of women-led businesses.
Create “one-stop shops” of centralized information for entrepreneurs including funding initiatives backed bygovernments, recognized supporting organizations, and training opportunities to reduce reliance on networks
and democratize access to relevant opportunities and information.
Address additional barriers faced by minority, displaced, and conflict-affected women to realizing economic
opportunities, including accessing financial services. Consider simplifying the process of obtaining
documentation required to access financial services, run a formal business, and expand access to businesscritical information.
Include gender-related provisions in international Free Trade Agreements to promote women’s access tointernational markets and grow their role in global-facing export markets.
Lead by example and follow the recommendations on procurement and supply chain practices described forthe private sector, implement gender smart procurement policies, and boost women’s participation in public
procurement processes.

Others

Improve data collection on the situation and experiences of women entrepreneurs and women-owned and ledbusinesses (factoring in other diversity factors such as ethnicity and disability) in order to understand wheremore work needs to be done, and where progress can be best expedited.

Note: Recommendations that are especially relevant for emerging market are highlighted in red.
Source: Citi Global Insights

210 Linda Scott, “Are Women-Owned Businesses Getting Cheated in Procurement Post-

COVID?” (presentation, Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, “Women Entrepreneurs
Mean Business” virtual summit, November 11, 2021).

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Strengthen women’s legal rights and ability
to exercise themGovernments aiming to improve the position of women entrepreneurs should
strengthen women’s ability to own assets, especially land and buildings, which canbe leveraged as collateral in the financial systems. The first step will be reversing
laws that prevent women from owning or inheriting assets. Beyond this, improving
land registries to help entrepreneurs prove ownership would not only improve theiraccess to finance but also enable them to feel more secure on their land, minimizing
risks and helping them to grow their business by reducing the risk of displacement.
This kind of intervention will help all entrepreneurs but especially women.
Governments should think digitally about land ownership to reduce theadministrative burden and costs of registering land — failure to consider thesefactors could be to the detriment of women entrepreneurs, who we know struggle tomeet the administrative hurdle of formalizing their businesses. Beyond land access,government policy also plays a key role in leveling the distribution of caring
responsibilities.
One approach is to financially support the provision of childcare, especially for lowincome women. The benefits of this would ripple well beyond just women
entrepreneurs with the possibility of women’s greater entrance to the labor force.

Include gender provisions in free trade
agreements

International policymaking can also be approached with a gender lens: genderrelated provisions can be included in international free trade agreements to holdgovernments accountable for supporting women entrepreneurs. This will help
women-led businesses access the global export market.
We are starting to see the inclusion of gender chapters in trade agreements, which
aim to stimulate women’s participation in international trade, recognizing that it
contributes to competitiveness, prosperity and more inclusive growth. In 2017,
Canada and Chile signed a trade and gender chapter as part of an updated Free
Trade Agreement (FTA). This was the first for any G20 country, and built on achapter on gender in the 2016 Chile-Uruguay FTA. A key objective of the CanadaChile FTA is to provide a platform for parties to collaborate on issues and activities
related to gender and trade that help to improve the capacity and conditions for
women entrepreneurs to fully access and benefit from opportunities created byinvestment and trade.211 Some have applauded the Canada-Chile chapter on
gender as a huge step forward in gender equality, as the inclusion of a chapter
represents recognition of the importance in applying a gender lens in tradenegotiations.212 However, time will tell if the chapters work in practice. An evaluationof Chile’s FTAs that include gender chapters (considering Uruguay, Canada, andArgentina) identified deficiencies including voluntary enforcement, lack of specificgoals and standards, dispute-settlement mechanisms that do not apply, and no
mandate on the alignment of gender-related legislation between parties.213

211 “Trade and Gender in Free Trade Agreements: The Canadian Approach,”

Government of Canada, last modified December 1, 2021.
212 Dan Ciuriak, Canada's Progressive Trade Agenda and the NAFTA Renegotiation,
Ciuriak Consulting, April 29, 2018.
213 Dorotea G. López, Felipe N. Muñoz, and Javiera B. Cáceres, “Gender Inclusion in
Chilean Free Trade Agreements,” UDP Facultad de Economia y Empresa, May 2019.

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While this was the first agreement including a G20 country, one study notes thatgender has been a key element of trade integration on the African continent, withthe first agreement with gender provisions adopted three decades before theCanada-Chile trade agreement.214 The research examines 62 trade agreements
and finds 54 gender provisions across 20 different agreements. Not all provisions
are as substantial as the Canada-Chile agreement chapter above, with some only
making mention of gender in the terms of co-operation. Other agreements, bycontrast, include mandatory measures and accountability mechanisms — indicatingthat at least some of the agreements go beyond what the Canada-Chile agreement
requires. Similar to the Canada-Chile agreement, many of the African agreements
are voluntary with no enforceability; however, research found that a third have a“high degree” of commitment to opening up trade for women’s economic
empowerment. While there is still room for improvement, the international
community can certainly learn from the experiences of Africa, Canada and Chile
who are leading the way on trade and gender provisions.
Democratize access to business-relevant
information

Governments also play a key role in democratizing access to business-relevant
information. Creating a “one-stop shop” of information for entrepreneurs is a key
first step towards achieving this. A single, centralized source of information, such asa government website, hosting information on a range of topics from how to registera business to government-backed funding initiatives, and from contact details of
supporting organizations to a directory of training opportunities. This kind of portal
for information would reduce reliance on networks, to which women entrepreneurs
lack access, and democratize access to both information and opportunities.

Recommendations for the Private Sector
Role of the private sector

Engagement from the private sector is critical in reducing gender inequalities in theworkplace and in the economic empowerment of women. We think private sector
actors are particularly well suited to tackle many of the barriers that women
entrepreneurs and women-owned businesses face. The international nature of large
corporations means they are well placed to support women’s access to global
markets. Below are our key recommendations for the private sector.215

214 Lolita Laperle-Forget, Gender Provisions in African Trade Agreements: An

Assessment of the Commitments for Reconciling Women’s Empowerment and Global
Trade, tralac, July 2021.
215 For additional toolkits, see: International Trade Centre with International Chamber ofCommerce, UPS and Women 20, Women Entrepreneurs: An Action Plan to “Build Back
Better,” 2020.; International Trade Centre, Making Public Procurement Work for Women,
2020; International Trade Centre, Unlocking Markets for Women to Trade, 2015.

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Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions

Figure 56. Key Recommendations for the Private Sector

Barriers

Recommendations

Access tofinance

Review supply chain financing mechanisms to increase liquidity for women-owned and led enterprises. Ensure thatpayment is made promptly, recognizing that women-led businesses often have less access to working capital.
Consider advance payments wherever feasible. Offer bank guarantees to women-led suppliers. Be aware of the
impact of delaying contracting or payment on businesses with less access to financing and avoid doing so.
Review supply chains to understand the gender gaps within them. Examine the pool of previous bidders for supply
chain contracts and review the gender diversity among them. Set procurement targets for sourcing from women-led
or women-owned businesses and report on progress towards them.

Participationin businessecosystems– marketaccess,networks,
skills

Improve the transparency of tender procedures by providing clear selection criteria and requirements at the request
for quotation stage in local language(s). Ensure that requests for quotations are shared as widely as is feasible,
including through communities of women-led SMEs. Appoint a reachable contact for the tender process to answer
any questions. Allow sufficient time to prepare a bid. Where possible, provide feedback to unsuccessful SMEs after
the conclusion of the tender process and sign-post training and development opportunities.
Consider whether formal requirements like high-level financial qualifications, premium industry certifications, or fully
audited financial accounts are really necessary and proportionate to the risks involved in onboarding a supplier.
Discuss diversity and the role of diverse suppliers with existing suppliers to encourage them to reflect on their own
supply chains; consider making payments directly to their women-owned suppliers to protect the interests of subcontractors.
Join and make use of platforms like ITC’s SheTrades to open up access to women-led enterprises; encourage
women suppliers to join these platforms to further grow their role in supply chains and connect with experienced
bidders and suppliers.
Invest in mentorship and digital/business skills training — especially in emerging and developing
economies — to help women become more competitive suppliers. Host workshops and information
sessions, e.g., site visits, to help women entrepreneurs understand how to become a supplier.
Implement gender equality policies that support the growth and progression of women employees; facilitate training
and mentorship programs; foster social norm change around gender roles that leads to a better balance in the
allocation of unpaid responsibilities among women and men.

Participationin businessecosystems– others

Create and expand “expert in residence” schemes that see employees from the private sector either seconded to, or
give a portion of their working time to, women-led enterprises to support their growth. This could be coordinated withcorporate volunteering schemes to support knowledge exchange between established corporates in the private
sector and SMEs.
Consider women in product design and innovate products and services that address the women’s market. Partnerwith women-led enterprises tackling these problems to add a gender dimension to existing product and service
offerings. For example, health-tech companies, by partnering with women-led enterprises, can both better address
their target market and mainstream gender-informed products.
For organizations which make philanthropic donations each year, consider routing some of these contributions toorganizations supporting women entrepreneurs.
Include care benefits as a central element of employee compensation packages, including offering paid familyleave, and ensure that these benefits recognise care needs as “chronic” or long-lasting rather than “acute” needs in
response to emergencies to raise the visibility and value of care and reduce unconscious bias throughout theworkforce.

Note: Recommendations that are especially relevant for emerging markets are highlighted in red.
Source: Citi Global Insights
Buy from women-led businesses© 2022 Citigroup

There is one key step that the private sector can take in supporting women-led
businesses: buying from them and including them as suppliers in the value chain.
The first step to including women in the supply chain must be reviewing the current
gender balance of suppliers along with the pool of previous bidders for contracts.
Building on this review, businesses should also set targets and monitor progressagainst them. In the short term, for many businesses, it may not be possible toreach a 50/50 gender split between men- and women-led businesses.

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To contextualize what these targets might look like: the World Bank target, as wesaw above, is 7% of procurement spend going to women-led businesses by 2023.
However, while reviews and targets are the logical first step, they will not alone
improve diversity in the global supply chain.
Ensure prompt or advance payment to
suppliers

Practical steps must be taken to improve the conditions for women-led businesses
in the global value chain. First, procurement officers must be aware of thechallenges faced by women-led businesses, which we outlined in the previous
chapters. In particular, we saw that women-led businesses often have less accessto working capital and smaller buffers of savings. Organizations must, therefore,
ensure the prompt payment of suppliers if they are to have a more diverse supply
chain. Even better than prompt payment would be (part-) advance payment.
Sensitivity to the financing constraints faced by women-led businesses should also
result in organizations avoiding delays to payments. This will help women-led
businesses to operate in the global value chain.
Further steps should be taken to increase the access that women-led businesses
have to tender procedures: first, the process should be as simple as possible andentirely transparent. Large corporates and governments could appoint a nominatedcontact to answer questions that bidders have. Since they lack access to networksof other entrepreneurs who could guide them, women entrepreneurs are less likely
to understand the process of procurement or the requirements at each stage of theprocess. Setting this out clearly and in the local language(s) will increase theirconfidence to bid for contracts. Running workshops and training sessions alongside
mentorship programs would further close this knowledge gap and allowing sufficient
time for bids to be prepared allows inexperienced bidders to navigate the process.
Moreover, lacking these networks also entails that women-led businesses do notalways hear of procurement opportunities: companies should ensure that theirrequests for quotation are shared as widely as possible to reach women-led
businesses.

Integrate philanthropic and business aims

© 2022 Citigroup

Efforts to diversify supply chains are not the only things that the private sector can
do to help unlock the potential of women entrepreneurs. We have been clear
throughout this report that backing women-led businesses is not philanthropy; it isgood business and women entrepreneurs generate significant returns. However, theprivate sector could align its philanthropic giving with its business intentions to help
build capacity among the next generation of women-led businesses with whom thesector will do business. Routing donations to organizations that support women
entrepreneurs is one option. Another is to leverage corporate volunteering schemes
to promote skills exchange between established corporates and SMEs by
expanding “expert in residence” schemes. This kind of partnership is the key tobuilding capacity for future generations of women-led businesses. Finally, theprivate sector can also play a significant role in addressing the sectoral imbalanceof women-led businesses. Some entrepreneurs come through the pipeline of larger
businesses and become entrepreneurs after their career: improving the pipeline ofwomen employees in high-margin sectors like ICT and Business Services would gosome way in addressing the sectoral imbalance of women-led businesses. Further,
the private sector plays a key role in changing the culture around care work.
Although providing care benefits as part of compensation packages for employees
and ensuring access to family leave will not directly assist women entrepreneurs,
both of these play a significant role in raising the profile of care work and its value,and hence in shifting wider social culture towards care work and its disproportionate
allocation to women.

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Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
and non-profit organizations (NPOs) provide
key local context in supporting women
entrepreneurs

Non-governmental and non-profit organizations are also key stakeholders which are
well suited to work with women in starting and growing their business, as well aswork with them, their families, and communities to tackle the harmful gender norms
and stereotypes that prevent women entrepreneurs and businesses from thriving.
They also often serve as trusted intermediaries who understand the local context
and who can help reach the most underserved and vulnerable communities. We
have also learnt from discussions that NGOs and NPOs are well placed to work withwomen entrepreneurs in a participatory approach to intervention design, whichlends itself to more holistic solutions.

Training Women Entrepreneurs in Developing Countries
George Awalla — Country Director, VSO Kenya and Hellen Onyango — Youth and Livelihood ProgrammeManager, VSO Kenya
At Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), we have conducted social exclusion and gender analysis, as well as otherparticipatory action research that have provided more clarity on the diverse social, cultural and structural barriers thatyoung women face in achieving economic empowerment.216 Due to low skill levels, most only access poorly paid or
unsafe work, making them vulnerable to exploitation and harassment. With insufficient support at the household andcommunity level, they engage in more housework and childcare responsibilities — unpaid work that significantly limits
their economic and social opportunities. Cultural norms and gender stereotypes have led to the discrimination andstigmatization of women and limited their access to productive assets. The COVID-19 crisis has further reduced theireconomic prospects, with young women unable to find work due to movement restrictions. Young women also face anintersectionality of challenges that could worsen stigma, and aggravate their vulnerability and inability to find decent andsafe work, such as gender discrimination, gender-based violence (GBV) and early marriage, HIV, disability, low literacy
levels, and poverty.
VSO utilizes participatory practices to engage and listen to the primary actors (project beneficiaries), and a range ofstakeholders at different levels to ensure our work is pro-poor and we are contributing to positive social change.
Participatory approaches provide primary actors with agency and ownership to lead initiatives, enhancing their capacity
and confidence to engage and take charge of their life paths, and participate in finding and implementing solutions to theeconomic, social, and health challenges that they face. We co-design interventions with young women based upon
quality research and evidence, seeking to understand the complex dimensions of poverty and power. This informs
decisions and enables us to monitor how we are contributing to change together with young women. Participatory tools
are utilized in identifying the right target for the project, and assessing their exclusion and context of marginalizationfrom accessing decent employment opportunities and skills development. Various mechanisms are also adopted toensure that the target groups are fully engaged in the need identification, design, and implementation of the project.
Young women are involved in a process that enables them and their communities to identify, investigate, andunderstand the problem to collaboratively plan for appropriate actions that address the challenges they face. VSO also
implements the Measuring Impact for Learning & Empowerment (MILE) approach, an innovative and systematic way ofpracticing participatory monitoring, evaluation, and learning. MILE brings together the key stakeholders, including young
women, in carrying out a series of participatory processes in four phases: co-designing, co-evidencing, co-learning, andco-influencing. MILE ensures that our decisions are driven by the voices and evidence from the young women to whom
we are accountable.
Other approaches used by VSO include the Volunteering for Development (VfD) approach, which deploys and embeds
community, national, and international volunteers to support marginalized young women participating in markets andtransition them to decent wage and self-employment opportunities. Because we recognize that women need to control
their sexual reproductive health for change to be sustainable, our approach addresses the intersectionality of challenges

216 Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) is a world leading independent international

development organization that works through volunteers to fight poverty in developing
countries. In 2020, VSO worked with communities in 29 countries, and reached over
12.9 million people.

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facing young women by integrating health and family planning, with maternal, newborn, and child health awareness foradolescent and adult mothers.
We also employ our youth engagement approach and continue to utilize youth networks to promote inclusive policy andpractice (i.e., participation, youth rights, and youth-friendly services) to enhance access to employment andentrepreneurship opportunities, particularly for young women. We take a multi-stakeholder approach and collectively
develop action plans to strengthen the market system collaboration to address microenterprise needs, and accessbusiness and social benefits.
In combination, these participatory approaches enable us to address various forms of structural and systemic
discrimination and inequality faced by young women (including those with disabilities), and as a result, increase their
voice and agency, and equip them with appropriate skills to cope with various transitions in their lives and life-changing
events. Participatory intervention promotes the development of inclusive market systems that adopt inclusive practices
to provide opportunities for decent jobs for young people, particularly young women.
VSO Kenya’s Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship (YEEP) is a project to foster the inclusion of inexperienced
youth from poor rural communities by creating opportunities to gain experience in employment and entrepreneurship.217
VSO adopts a holistic workforce development program including vocational training, applied learning(apprenticeships/internships), entrepreneurship training, soft skills, job match services, and/or mentoring — and works
with disabled youth to ensure policy inclusion and livelihood planning initiatives at the county and national level. YEEP
also integrates social and gender inclusion, social accountability, and resilience. This approach enables us to address all
forms structural and systemic discrimination and inequality faced by marginalized youth, especially young women andyouth with disabilities. Activities are implemented to build agency for them to become active citizens, allowing them to beeffective contributors in society by developing youth-led initiatives addressing their unemployment, accessing to training,sexual reproductive health services, and social services.
“If you have a business, despites its size, it can take you from a low level to a higher
level. You can do anything with it — you can build your house, buy household items,
buy clothes, and even help those that lack, all because you own a business. You do nothave to own a big business, a wholesale shop or work in an office; the small businessthat you have, even if it is just selling tomatoes, it can upgrade your life.”“I have even employed a lady whom I pay to help me sell at the kiosk. I know how tobudget and even save some little extra money that I get from my business. I am awareof my rights and even know how to ask for that right, especially on family planning.”“What makes me happy now is the recent training we received on climate change
adaptation and Village Loans and Savings Association. I now have my kitchen garden
where I grow sukumawiki and manage (collard greens and traditional vegetables). I
have my 10 hens that give my family eggs and manure and I have also planted somedrafted mangoes and we now eat a balanced diet.”— Evelyn Awuor, Shop Owner, Siaya County, Kenya

217 The Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship Project (2017-21) is co-funded by theCiti Foundation and the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office. The
project has enabled 10,850 young people to access wage and self-employment
opportunities in Machakos and Siaya County.

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Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions

A number of initiatives fromintergovernmental organizations (IGOs)
support the growth of women-led
businesses

Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), such as the United Nations system which
includes UN Women, UN Development Programme (UNDP), World HealthOrganization (WHO), and Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), as
well as the Bretton Woods Institutions such as the World Bank Group and theInternational Monetary Fund (IMF), also have important roles to play, especiallyacross developing economies. Gender equality is very much a cross-cutting theme
and all UN agencies can work to raise awareness and promote women
entrepreneurship and economic empowerment more broadly within their work. The
World Bank Group certainly has a vital role to play in developing economies given
its mission on poverty reduction and prosperity. The International FinanceCorporation (IFC), in particular, is a key player and as Henriette Kolb (Head of the
Gender and Economic Inclusion Group) told us, “Supporting women
entrepreneurship has been the longest running focus for IFC.”
IGOs like the World Bank Group and IMF have strong convening power, which canbring together public, private and non-governmental organizations in tackling themultitude of barriers that women entrepreneurs face. Moreover, in the context ofincreasing protectionism around supply chains, there is a role for IGOs and supragovernmental organizations to monitor the impact of trade protectionism on womenand marginalized communities more broadly.218 This must extend to advocating fortheir inclusion in global trade. We are encouraged to see a growing number ofinternational initiatives focusing on women entrepreneurship: The 2X Collective is an industry body with global reach, which aims to equip

investors with the knowledge and resources they need to expand financing
aimed at women’s economic empowerment.
 Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi), launched by the World Bank, isa collaborative partnership between governments, multilateral developmentbanks, the private sector, and other stakeholders, which aims to take a holistic
approach to help women entrepreneurs in developing economies gain access tofinance, markets, and networks.
 The International Trade Centre launched the SheTrades Initiative to provide

women entrepreneurs and women-owned SMEs with a unique network and aplatform to connect their businesses to markets. The platform can be used by
women entrepreneurs to showcase their business, and by companies or buyers
looking to diversify their suppliers.219
 WEConnect International is a global network connecting women-owned

businesses to qualified buyers around the world. They help to provide theknowledge, networks, certification, and platform women business owners need toreach new markets.
Improving data collection is a vital first stepin dimensioning the challenges faced by
women entrepreneurs

Data collection is another area requiring collaboration. More and better data is stillneeded on women entrepreneurship, especially on the intersectionality with otherforms of diversity, including ethnicity and disability. This is in line with the need forbetter gender data overall, as there is a distinct gender data gap, and shockingly westill lack data for 60% of the indicators for gender equality across the UN SDGs.220

218 International Trade Centre with International Chamber of Commerce, UPS and

Women 20, Women Entrepreneurs: An Action Plan to ‘Build Back Better,’ 2020.
219 “ITC SheTrades,” International Trade Centre, accessed February 27, 2022.
220 “We Now Have More Gender-Related SDG Data Than Ever, But Is It Enough?” UN

Women – Women Count, May 6, 2021.

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More research is also needed on solutions and understanding what works tosupport women entrepreneurs and women-owned/led businesses in order to better
inform policy and decision making. Additional research and evidence on the socialand economic benefits of women entrepreneurship can also help to strengthen thecase for more action and support across all parts of society. In the Citi GPS report
Women in the Economy II report, we emphasized the importance of collaborationand partnerships in supporting women entrepreneurs, and it is one of the sevenprinciples we listed for a transformative agenda on women’s economic
empowerment. We cannot unlock the potential of women entrepreneurship with aflick of a switch: it requires micro-level interventions alongside a dismantling ofmacro-level constraints and, only by partnerships, can we put all our resources to
productive use and achieve scalable and sustainable impact.
In these times of crisis, the world must not regress and turn back time on the
progress made in gender equality, but instead work to ensure women are put at theheart of economic recovery. As the world sets out to “build back better” from the
COVID-19 pandemic, the international community should not forget about the powerof women entrepreneurship and its ability to drive more inclusive and sustainablegrowth and development. The scale of the opportunity presented by equal
participation in entrepreneurship is immense, with the International Labour
Organization estimating that 50% of women’s entrepreneurship is underused,compared with 22% of men’s. Empowering women through entrepreneurship could
be the catalyst we need to accelerate recovery, but at the same time, governments,
businesses, and international organizations should ensure actions taken to “build
back better” help to knock down barriers for women entrepreneurs, and not
reinforce them. They may just be some of the smartest decisions we can make.

© 2022 Citigroup

Citi Global Perspectives & Solutions (Citi GPS) is designed to help our clientsnavigate the global economy’s most demanding challenges, identify future themes andtrends, and help our clients profit in a fast-changing and interconnected world. Citi GPS
accesses the best elements of our global conversation and harvests the thought
leadership of a wide range of senior professionals across the firm.
All Citi GPS reports are available on our website www.citi.com/citigps
Eliminating Poverty
The Importance of aMultidimensional Approach
February 2022

Global Supply Chains
The Complicated Road Back
to “Normal”
December 2021

Philanthropy and the Global
EconomyOpportunities in a World ofTransition
November 2021

Education: Learning for Life
Why L&D is the Next Frontierin Global Education
November 2021

Home of the Future
Building for Net Zero

Global Carbon Markets
Solving the Emissions Crisis
Before Time Runs Out
October 2021

October 2021
Disruptive Innovations VIII
Ten More Things to Stop andThink About
October 2021

Holistic Digital Policy
Nation States Must Lead in
Building Equitable HumanCentric Digital Economies
October 2021

Biodiversity
The Ecosystem at the Heartof Business
July 2021

Natural Gas
Powering Up the Energy
Transition
July 2021

Technology at Work v6.0
The Coming of the PostProduction Society
June 2021

Hard to Abate Sectors &Emissions
The Toughest Nuts to CrackMay 2021

Future of Money
Crypto, CBDCs and 21stCentury Cash
April 2021

Systemic Risk
Systemic Solutions for an
Interconnected World
April 2021

BitcoinAt the Tipping Point

Financing a Greener Planet
Volume 1
Volume 2
February 2021

March 2021

Electric Vehicle Transition

Investment Themes in 2021

February 2021

January 2021

The Global Art Market and
COVID-19
Innovating and Adapting
December 2020

Education: Fast Forward to
the Future

The Holistic Case forInvestment in Girls

Closing the Racial
Inequality Gaps

October 2020

September 2020

Negative Interest Rates
Where Is the Real Limit to
Cheap Money?
July 2020

ePrivacy & Data Protection
Data Privacy & its Influence
on AI Ethics, Competition &Tech Evolution
July 2020

Technology at Work v5.0
The New Normal of Remote
Work
June 2020

5G and Mobile Operators
Is Virtual Becoming Real?
April 2020

Closing the Loop on Global
Recycling
Finding a Global Solution to
the Patchwork of Recycling
February 2020

Disruptive Innovations VII
Ten More Things to Stop andThink About
February 2020

Building a TCFD With Teeth
What the Markets Need toPrice Climate Risk
February 2020

Banking the Next Billion
Digital Financial Inclusion in
ActionJanuary 2020

Experiential Commerce
A Brave New World
January 2020

Investment Themes in 2020

Corporate Finance
Priorities 2020
January 2020

Car of the Future v4.0 –2020 Update
The Race for the Future of
Networked Mobility
January 2020

The Global Art Market
Drivers of Evolution

Education: Power to thePeopleExploring Opportunities forPrivate Capital in Education
November 2019

December 2019

October 2020

January 2020

March 2022

Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions

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March 2022

Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions

NOW / NEXT
Key Insights regarding the future of Women Entrepreneurs

LABOR MARKET

Women-led businesses can be more profitable than those led by men if given accessto the same resources. However, women entrepreneurs face major barriers related
to accessing finance, and participating in public life and the business ecosystem. /Achieving gender parity in business growth could increase global GDP by 2%-3%
and create up to 433 million jobs.

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS

The International Labour Organization estimates that 50% of women’s
entrepreneurial potential is underused, compared with just 22% of men’s. /Women’s economic empowerment can have multiplier effects across families andcommunities. Women-owned businesses generally employ more women, which canfurther boost women’s economic empowerment.

POLICYSupporting women entrepreneurs is one of the smartest things that governments,
corporations, and the finance community could do economically. / Key actions
include improving policies to end gender discrimination, adopting gender-smart
supply chains, and recognizing the business opportunity of financing women-owned
businesses.

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Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions
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