Browse by Theme: Entrepreneurs

As CARE gets ready to launch its new Women’s Economic Justice strategy, we’re sharing some diverse perspectives on why women’s economic justice matters and what’s needed to achieve it. Linda Scott is an academic, a long-term partner of CARE and author of The Double X Economy. From the impact of COVID-19 to the value of unpaid care to the role of the private sector, here are some of Linda’s thoughts on why the economic potential and contribution of women cannot be ignored.

Time and again it becomes clear that when women are economically empowered, the whole community benefits. That’s why supporting women to start a business is a core focus of CARE. Via, for example, training and access to finance, such as through Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLA), women worldwide are finding a way out of poverty.

Microfinance organisations serve approximately 140 million low-income people around the world. And the vast majority of these are women (roughly 80%), who live in rural areas (roughly 65%) . At the end of March when the world was starting to wake up to the harsh social and economic realities of the COVID-19 pandemic, a significant number of these institutions suddenly found themselves wondering if/how they were going to survive this global crisis.

When I travelled to Zimbabwe at the end of last year to conduct the annual evaluation of our two microfinance partners there, I arrived just as its latest economic crisis was unfolding. So I was able to see for myself how peer-to-peer funders like Lendwithcare can play a critical role in supporting entrepreneurs and their businesses in unstable environments.

A CARE Nepal project helped women find a way out of poverty using training and ID cards. One woman in the project got her first citizenship card at age 21 even though she had been married for 8 years already. She told us that, before the project she wasn’t allowed to say her husband’s name. Now, she’s running a business that can pull her out of poverty. Find out more about what this project achieved for women's ecomomic empowerment in Nepal.

Masuda, Shankori and Shilpi are entrepreneurial midwives who are improving health access in one of the most remote districts in Bangladesh, where maternal and under-5 mortality rates have fallen dramatically in recent years. These powerful women are also generating more income for their families and changing social norms. Having met them on a trip to Bangladesh, Kate Barwise considers what can be learned from their successes and how to support more women like them to help more communities.

For 27 years CARE has worked with communities to support Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) so that women living in poverty can save, invest and improve their lives. Our new Global Reach report shows astounding progress in the global spread and impact of these community-based financial solutions. Today 6.7 million people across 46 countries are saving and managing more than US$433 million per year through CARE VSLAs. Ahead of the SEEP Network SG2018 global savings group conference in Rwanda this week, this success prompts the question: ‘‘how many more women and girls could benefit from participating in a VSLA?”