Working for Women Worldwide - Embassy of the United States

Sauerbrey, U.S. representative to the U. N. Commission
on the Status of Women. “That’s why we continue
to promote property and inheritance rights for
women in every forum.”
Microenterprise: Key Engine
of Growth for Women
A particularly promising global phenomenon for
women is the development of microenterprises—businesses
of fewer than 10 employees (often including paid
and unpaid family members) that are owned and operated
by someone who is poor. These very small businesses
are becoming key engines of economic development,
spurring income growth and poverty reduction
throughout the developing world.
In many countries, particularly in Asia and
Africa, the microenterprise sector constitutes the
majority of the working population. No less than 90
percent of workers in India owe their livelihood to this
segment of the economy, for example, while in Mexico
microenterprises are responsible for 64 percent of total
employment and 32 percent of gross domestic product.
The U.N. Commission on the Private Sector and
Development, headed by Canada’s Prime Minister
Paul Martin and Mexico’s former president, Ernesto
Zedillo, found that small enterprises are an enormous
and underutilized resource for economic development
and poverty eradication, particularly for women. Its
2004 report, Unleashing Entrepreneurship: Making
Business Work for the Poor, notes:
“In many developing countries, women constitute
the majority of microentrepreneurs in the informal
economy and a significant percentage of the formal
sector. Many of them are illiterate and live in poor
rural communities. And setting up their own enterprises—generally
microenterprises—is usually the
only possibility for them to be employed and earn an
income on their own. In Latin America and the
Caribbean between 25 percent and 35 percent of formal
sector microenterprises and small and medium
enterprises are owned and operated by women. In the
Philippines women own 44 percent of the microenterprises,
more than 80 percent in rural areas. In
Zimbabwe women run the majority of microenterprises
and small enterprises (67 percent), while enterprises
run by men tend to provide proportionally more of
the household income and have more employees.”
At present, the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID) works in partnership with
more than 500 American, host country, and international
organizations around the world to spur the creation
and development of microenterprises and deliver
financial services to the poor. These programs focus
on:
* Encouraging the reform of laws, regulations, and
policies to facilitate entrepreneurship and the creation
and operation of microenterprises, as well as
expanding access to financial services for the poor;
* Helping local providers of business development
services (such as training, product design, input
sourcing, and marketing) to extend and tailor
their offerings to poorer clients who run microenterprises;
and
* Supporting microfinance institutions, so that
diverse financial services, including credit, can be
offered to those normally excluded from formal
financial markets.
Research shows that most of the people who seek
financing for extremely small businesses are women.
Moreover, they are proving to be resourceful business
owners and highly motivated savers who repay their
loans at a higher rate than men.
The United States sees microenterprises as a
foundation for building stable communities. Since
2000, average annual USAID funding for microenterprises
has exceeded $150 million. In the 2002 fiscal
year, this support reached more than 3.7 million
microentrepreneurs, more than two-thirds of whom
were women. In 2003, the United States signed into
law the Microenterprise Enhancement Act, reaffirming
the commitment of Congress to microenterprise
development and directing USAID to fund microenterprise
activities at the level of $200 million for Fiscal
Year 2004.
Expanding the benefits of microfinance to even
more women will mean providing services to the
extremely poor, creating safe and accessible savings
instruments, using microfinance groups as a vehicle to
address the HIV/AIDS crisis, and promoting women
as leaders in the microfinance industry. U.S. programs
established during the past four years contribute to
these efforts.
Helping Women Farmers to Succeed
The vast majority of poor women live in rural
areas where the primary income and livelihood sources
are subsistence and smallholder agriculture. In developing
countries, women comprise approximately 67
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