SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Women’s Entrepre-
neurship and Economic Empowerment Act of 2018’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
Congress finds the following: 
(1) Because women make up the majority of 
the world’s poor and gender inequalities prevail in 
incomes, wages, access to finance, ownership of as-
sets, and control over the allocation of resources, 
women’s entrepreneurship and economic empower-
ment is important to achieve inclusive economic 
growth at all levels of society. Research shows that 
when women exert greater influence over household 
finances, economic outcomes for families improve, 
and childhood survival rates, food security, and edu-
cational attainment increase. Women also tend to 
place a greater emphasis on household savings which 
improves families’ financial resiliency. 
(2) A 2016 report by the McKinsey Global In-
stitute estimated that achieving global gender parity 
in economic activity could add as much as $28 tril-
lion to annual global gross domestic product (GDP) 
by 2025. 
(3) Lack of access to financial services that ad-
dress gender-specific constraints impedes women’s 
economic inclusion. More than 1 billion women
around the world are currently left out of the formal 
financial system, which in turn causes many women 
to rely on informal means of saving and borrowing 
that are riskier and less reliable. Among other con-
sequences, this hampers the success of women entre-
preneurs, including those seeking to run or grow 
small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The 
International Finance Corporation has estimated 
that 70 percent of women-owned SMEs in the for-
mal sector are unserved or underserved in terms of 
access to credit, amounting to a $285 billion credit 
gap. 
(4) Women’s economic empowerment is inex-
tricably linked to a myriad of other women’s human 
rights that are essential to their ability to thrive as 
economic actors across the lifecycle. This includes, 
but is not limited to, living lives free of violence and 
exploitation, achieving the highest possible standard 
of health and well-being, enjoying full legal and 
human rights such as access to registration, identi-
fication, and citizenship documents, benefitting from 
formal and informal education, and equal protection 
of and access to land and property rights, access to 
fundamental labor rights, policies to address dis-
proportionate care burdens, and business and man-
agement skills and leadership opportunities. 
(5) Discriminatory legal and regulatory systems 
and banking practices are hurdles to women’s access 
to capital and assets, including land, machinery, pro-
duction facilities, technology, and human resources. 
Often, these barriers are connected to a woman’s 
marital status, which can determine whether she is 
able to inherit land or own property in her name. 
These constraints contribute to women frequently 
running smaller businesses, with fewer employees 
and lower asset values. 
(6) Savings groups primarily comprised of 
women are recognized as a vital entry point, espe-
cially for poor and very poor women, to formal fi-
nancial services and there is a high demand for such 
groups to protect and grow their savings with formal 
financial institutions. Evidence shows that, once 
linked to a bank, the average savings per member 
increases between 40 to 100 percent and the average 
profit per member doubles. Key to these outcomes is 
investing in financial literacy, business leadership 
training, and mentorship. 
(7) United States support for microenterprise 
and microfinance development programs, which seek
to reduce poverty in low-income countries by giving 
small loans to small-scale entrepreneurs without col-
lateral, have been a useful mechanism to help fami-
lies weather economic shocks, but many microcredit 
borrowers largely remain in poverty. The vast major-
ity of microcredit borrowers are women who would 
like to move up the economic ladder but are held 
back by binding constraints that create a ‘‘missing 
middle’’—large numbers of microenterprises, a 
handful of large firms or conglomerates, and very 
few SMEs in between, which are critical to driving 
economic growth in developing countries. 
(8) According to the World Bank, SMEs create 
4 out of 5 new positions in emerging markets but 
about half of formal SMEs don’t have access to for-
mal credit. The financing gap is even larger when 
micro and informal enterprises are taken into ac-
count. Overall, approximately 70 percent of all 
micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) 
in emerging markets lack access to credit.
SEC. 3. ACTIONS TO IMPROVE GENDER POLICIES OF THE 
UNITED 
STATES 
AGENCY 
FOR 
INTER-
NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT. 
(a) DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION POLICY.—It shall 
be the development cooperation policy of the United 
States— 
(1) to reduce gender disparities in access to, 
control over, and benefit from economic, social, polit-
ical, and cultural resources, wealth, opportunities, 
and services; 
(2) to strive to eliminate gender-based violence 
and mitigate its harmful effects on individuals and 
communities through efforts to develop standards 
and capacity to reduce gender-based violence in the 
workplace and other places where women conduct 
work; 
(3) to support activities that secure private 
property rights and land tenure for women in devel-
oping countries, including legal frameworks to give 
women equal rights to own, register, use, profit 
from, and inherit land and property, legal literacy to 
exercise these rights, and capacity of law enforce-
ment and community leaders to enforce such rights; 
and 
(4) to increase the capability of women and 
girls to realize their rights, determine their life out-
comes, assume leadership roles, and influence deci-
sion-making in households, communities, and soci-
eties. 
(b) ACTIONS.—In order to advance the policy de-
scribed in subsection (a), the Administrator of the United 
States Agency for International Development shall ensure 
that— 
(1) strategies, projects, and activities of the 
Agency are shaped by a gender analysis and, when 
applicable, use standard indicators to provide one 
measure of success of such strategies, projects, and 
activities; and 
(2) gender equality and female empowerment is 
integrated throughout the Agency’s Program Cycle 
and related processes for purposes of strategic plan-
ning, project design and implementation, and moni-
toring and evaluation. 
(c) GENDER ANALYSIS DEFINED.—In this section, 
the term ‘‘gender analysis’’— 
(1) means a socio-economic analysis of available 
or gathered quantitative and qualitative information 
to identify, understand, and explain gaps between 
men and women which typically involves exam-
ining—
(A) differences in the status of women and 
men and their differential access to and control 
over assets, resources, opportunities, and serv-
ices; 
(B) the influence of gender roles, struc-
tural barriers, and norms on the division of 
time between paid employment, unpaid work 
(including subsistence production and care for 
family members), and volunteer activities; 
(C) the influence of gender roles, struc-
tural barriers, and norms on leadership roles 
and decision making; constraints, opportunities, 
and entry points for narrowing gender gaps and 
empowering women; and 
(D) potential differential impacts of devel-
opment policies and programs on men and 
women, including unintended or negative con-
sequences; and 
(2) includes conclusions and recommendations 
to enable development policies and programs to nar-
row gender gaps and improve the lives of women and 
girls.
SEC. 4. DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE FOR MICRO, SMALL 
AND MEDIUM-SIZED ENTERPRISES. 
(a) FINDINGS AND POLICY.—Section 251 of the For-
eign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 U.S.C. 2211) is amend-
ed— 
(1) in paragraph (1)— 
(A) by striking ‘‘microenterprise’’ and in-
serting ‘‘micro, small and medium-sized enter-
prise’’; 
(B) by striking ‘‘and in the development’’ 
and inserting ‘‘, in the development’’; and 
(C) by adding at the end before the period 
the following: ‘‘, and in the economic empower-
ment of the poor, especially women’’; 
(2) in paragraph (2)— 
(A) by striking ‘‘microenterprise’’ and in-
serting ‘‘micro, small and medium-sized enter-
prise’’; and 
(B) by adding at the end before the period 
the following: ‘‘, particularly those enterprises 
owned, managed, and controlled by women’’; 
(3) in paragraph (3), by striking ‘‘microenter-
prises’’ and inserting ‘‘micro, small and medium- 
sized enterprises’’;
(4) in paragraph (4), by striking ‘‘microenter-
prise’’ and inserting ‘‘micro, small and medium-sized 
enterprise’’; 
(5) in paragraph (5)— 
(A) by striking ‘‘should continue’’ and in-
serting ‘‘should continue and be expanded’’; and 
(B) by striking ‘‘microenterprise and 
microfinance development assistance’’ and in-
serting ‘‘development assistance for micro, 
small and medium-sized enterprises’’; and 
(6) in paragraph (6)— 
(A) by striking ‘‘have been successful’’ and 
inserting ‘‘have had some success’’; 
(B) by striking ‘‘microenterprise pro-
grams’’ and inserting ‘‘development assistance 
for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises’’; 
and 
(C) by striking ‘‘, such as countries in 
Latin America’’. 
(b) AUTHORIZATION; IMPLEMENTATION; TARGETED 
ASSISTANCE.—Section 252 of the Foreign Assistance Act 
of 1961 (22 U.S.C. 2211a) is amended as follows: 
(1) In subsection (a)— 
(A) in the matter preceding paragraph 
(1)—
(i) by striking ‘‘credit, savings, and 
other services’’ and inserting ‘‘credit, in-
cluding the use of innovative credit scoring 
models, savings, financial technology, fi-
nancial literacy, insurance, property rights, 
and other services’’; and 
(ii) by striking ‘‘microfinance and mi-
croenterprise clients’’ and inserting ‘‘micro, 
small and medium-sized enterprise cli-
ents’’; 
(B) in paragraph (1), by striking ‘‘micro-
finance and microenterprise clients’’ and insert-
ing ‘‘micro, small and medium-sized enterprise 
clients, particularly those clients owned, man-
aged, and controlled by women’’; 
(C) in paragraph (2)— 
(i) by striking ‘‘microenterprises’’ and 
inserting ‘‘micro, small and medium-sized 
enterprises’’; and 
(ii) by inserting ‘‘acquire United 
States goods and services,’’ after ‘‘United 
States markets,’’; 
(D) in paragraph (3)—