Theme
Gender

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"The Guide was developed by CDC and IFC with support from the Government of Canada. It is a practical "how to" step by step guide for fund managers on how to strengthen gender diversity within their own firms and incorporate a gender focus into investment operations. It combines learnings from CDC and IFC's experience with over 160 Fund Managers and draws on best practices with a series of case studies from stakeholders across the industry."

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"The extensive and ever-increasing penetration of mobile phones in developing and emerging markets presents a significant opportunity to women entrepreneurs who want to develop their micro businesses into flourishing small and growing enterprises. The objective of this study was to identify the most useful mobile value added services (VAS) solutions which would enable women entrepreneurs to advance their businesses in selected geographies. As a result of this identification exercise, this report serves as a valuable reminder that investment in mobile VAS presents promising and beneficial outcomes for commercial stakeholders, nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), governments and women entrepreneurs alike."

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"This report is part of a wider study that aims to unpack the contribution of Gender Lens Investing in women’s economic empowerment, and builds on the existing literature on the understanding of the finance gap for women-owned enterprises in developing countries. It is based on insights gathered from 200+ women entrepreneurs across Kenya, Rwanda, India and Indonesia. While analysing the factors affecting access to finance for women entrepreneurs, the report touches upon its effect on their lives in terms of impact on their agency, bargaining power, ability to challenge patriarchal attitudes, and financial independence, through examples. The report posits a segmentation framework to bring out the differentiated characteristics, needs and challenges of women-owned businesses businesses."

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"We study the effects of explosive growth in the Bangladeshi ready-made garments industry on the lives on Bangladeshi women. We compare the marriage, childbearing, school enrollment and employment decisions of women who gain greater access to garment sector jobs to women living further away from factories, to years before the factories arrive close to some villages, and to the marriage and enrollment decisions of their male siblings. Girls exposed to the garment sector delay marriage and childbirth. This stems from (a) young girls becoming more likely to be enrolled in school after garment jobs (which reward literacy and numeracy) arrive, and (b) older girls becoming more likely to be employed outside the home in garment-proximate villages. The demand for education generated through manufacturing growth appears to have a much larger effect on female educational attainment compared to a large-scale government conditional cash transfer program to encourage female schooling."

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"Designing resilience programs that effectively strengthen women's resilience capacities requires a detailed understanding of each pathway in the program setting. In recognition of the need for context-specific gender and resilience analysis, BRIGE (Building Resilience through Integration of Gender and Empowerment) worked with resilience programs in Indonesia, Nepal, and Niger to develop and to pilot measurement tools that serve multiple purposes for gender integration in Mercy Corps' resilience-focused programs. These purposes include identifying gender-related barriers to resilience, measuring how resilience programs affect these pathways, and supporting staff learning.

This report synthesizes lessons learned from the pilot studies where these tools were developed and applied. It provides guidance on how to contextualize future applications of the tools for different situations and purposes, as well as how to interpret and analyze findings. The report presents the three gender and resilience tools with suggested learning goals, tool questions and instructions, interpretation and analysis, lessons from the pilots, and ways to modify the tools for a specific context."

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"A quantitative analysis of our portfolio covering 11 years and 160+ borrowers from around the world revealed that, on average, companies with the highest female representation in board and leadership positions outperformed those with the least. The results suggest that the percentage of women in leadership positions is especially important to financial performance. We also share practical guidance for investors on how to adopt a gender lens. As practitioners who have developed our own gender-lens strategy over the past seven years, we can speak to the confusion, the evolution, and ultimately, the rewards, of incorporating gender into investment analysis."

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"Aimed at investors and other development practitioners, this toolkit highlights the potential of using finance to impact and empower adolescent girls and young women in emerging markets. The toolkit is based on the work of SPRING and four years of experience in running its accelerator for girls and young women impact ventures in East Africa and South Asia."

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"The purpose of the paper is to find the relationship between education and training and performance of women entrepreneurs (WEs). The present study found that entrepreneurial education stimulates women to take up entrepreneurship as a career option."

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"The purpose of this document is to provide an insider look at the application of the BalanceD-MERL approach in a program operating in a complex environment. The Women + Water Global Development Alliance is a five-year (2017-2022) collaboration among USAID, Gap, Inc., CARE, Water.org, the Institute for Sustainable Communities and the International Center for Research on Women. Together, these organizations are leveraging their complementary strengths to improve and sustain the health and well-being of women and communities touched by the apparel industry. The BalanceD-MERL consortium delivered a MERL strategy to the Alliance. In this document, the BalanceD-MERL consortium shares their experience of applying the approach and provides key takeaways from the application of the approach. The BalanceDMERL consortium also gives decision-makers, program implementers, and MERL practitioners action–items to undertake to enhance the effectiveness of this approach."

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"This study explores how the social entrepreneurship ecosystem can unite to develop an action plan on gender lens incubation and investing for enterprises focused on the low income market segment in India. It takes an international perspective with a geographical focus on India an emerging leader in innovation for the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) and is supported by examples of such innovative high impact, sustainable enterprises."

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