On Our Radar: November 2024

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2023/24 Women’s Entrepreneurship report highlights an upward trend in women's startup and established business ownership over the past quarter century. In the 45 countries surveyed, one in three high-growth entrepreneurs and nearly two in five export-oriented startups were led by women. Countries like China, Colombia, Iran, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Venezuela showed particularly high rates of women bringing new innovations to market. 

Key takeaways from report:

1. Women’s startup activity rates have risen from an average of 6.1% between 2001-2005 to 10.4% for the 2021-2023 period across 30 GEM-participating countries. High-income countries continue to report the lowest rates of women’s startup activity and display the largest gender gap.
2. Women’s established business ownership rates across the 30 countries compared have also gone up from 4.2% to the current 5.9%. High rates were particularly strong for women in South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Lithuania, Puerto Rico and Thailand.
3. Entrepreneurial perceptions among women have improved significantly over the past two decades, with a 79% increase in perceived business opportunities and a 27% increase in startup skills. Fear of failure rates have also risen by over half among women, posing new questions for researchers and policymakers.

At the current pace, closing the gender gap in access to financial services will take over a century. CGAP's gender conceptual framework offers a new vision of women's financial inclusion through an intentional whole-of-market approach rooted in all actors across the financial ecosystem serving women more and better. It outlines the importance of an intentional whole-of-market response centered around five women's financial inclusion levers: establishing gender-disaggregated data infrastructure, adopting enabling policies and regulations, driving inclusive investment environments, addressing gender norms, and aligning public and private sector goals. Together, these actions can bring about meaningful and lasting change.

WIDEF's recent report titled, “Effective Practices for Closing the Gender Digital Divide", provides case studies of impactful programs tackling the gender digital divide by addressing key areas like access, literacy, tools, and safety. This report was created as a resource to funders, practitioners, and organizations looking to learn more about the gender digital divide, its impacts globally, and solutions being championed worldwide to close the divide.  

Despite the obstacles that women entrepreneurs face, it's not the lack of confidence they face, but fair market systems. There are millions of women worldwide already leading small businesses with purpose and resilience, all while overcoming discrimination and systemic barriers. CARE's latest research in partnership with Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth reveals that addressing barriers related to financial services, support networks, and digital technology may be what is needed to further increase their confidence and boost business growth.

The Gender Equality and Climate Policy Scorecard will monitor national climate policy commitments aimed at addressing gender inequalities, and their implementation. The Scorecard considers five gender dimensions, alongside gender mainstreaming, as essential for climate policies to be truly gender-responsive. It evaluates how countries assess the impacts of climate change on gender inequalities and barriers, highlights the contributions of women and girls to climate action, and tracks policy actions aimed at addressing these inequalities. This brief developed by UN Women in partnership with the Kaschak Institute and IUCN, provides insights on scoring criteria through guiding questions and promising examples from current Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) that can support policymakers to include more ambitious and comprehensive gender commitments in the 2025 update of their NDCs.

Climate change is hitting hard and women are bearing the brunt of it; facing increased economic hardship, health crisis, and displacement. How can financial service providers to support the 880 million women in climate-vulnerable countries that have no way to receive an emergency relief payment after a disaster? This blog from Women's World Banking explores this crisis and what policymakers, financial institutions, and civil society are doing about it.