Working for Women Worldwide - Embassy of the United States

constitute 10 to 25 percent of the nonagricultural
workforce in developing countries.
USAID takes a holistic approach to microenterprise
development, employing a wide range of strategies
to help poor entrepreneurs overcome the many
obstacles that can hinder their success. Traditionally,
this has meant working with microfinance institutions
to broaden access to credit. This is especially important
for women, who for legal or economic reasons
often find themselves unable to obtain credit and the
other financial services they need to start or expand
their businesses. In recent years, USAID has expanded
its efforts to address the obstacles entrepreneurs
face by working with industry associations and private-sector
firms to develop markets for the nonfinancial
business services that small entrepreneurs need.
An example from Azerbaijan illustrates how
USAID’s work in business development services has
benefited women with home-based animal husbandry
enterprises. In Azerbaijan, cultural norms dictate that
women should not have one-on-one contact with men
outside their families. As most veterinarians are male,
women have enjoyed only very limited access to veterinary
services. With USAID support, Mercy Corps
works to assist women’s groups that join together to
purchase veterinary services on a periodic basis.
Veterinarians now view these women-run, homebased
businesses as a financially viable market.
Consequently, they are designing more demand-driven
services and payment methods that are better suited
for this clientele.
Ethiopia is another good example. It is struggling
to overcome significant challenges to development—
including a recent war, food shortages, and the
HIV/AIDS pandemic. Women in particular face
mounting obstacles, with a 42-year life expectancy at
birth and limited access to education, health, and other
social services.
In response, a USAID-supported urban agricultural
program is showing HIV/AIDS-affected
women in selected urban areas how to create low-cost,
nonlabor-intensive urban gardens. With appropriate
training, organization, and market linkages, these
urban gardens supply food for the owners’ households
as well as a significant surplus that offer the women
and their families income for medical, educational, and
other expenses.
Returns on labor and capital for urban gardening
are very high: Households spend at most one hour a
day on the larger gardens, and even less time on smaller
ones. The combination of available food with medium-
and long-term income opportunities diminishes
the health and economic effects of HIV/AIDS and
will have a positive impact on reducing infections in
the country.
The Peace Corps also promotes the development
of community-based small business and microenterprise
projects in virtually all the countries where it is
active. One Peace Corps volunteer in Togo, for example,
initiated a revolving credit group for women at the
beginning of her tour of duty in 2000. That credit
group continues to grow and thrive, with enough funds
now on hand for its members to open bank accounts,
reinvest in their businesses, and pay for the education
of their children.
U.S. government support for microenterprise
development continues to evolve in new directions as
different challenges arise. Constata, a microfinance
institution in Georgia, received grants from USAID
and other donors totaling just over $4 million to help
its work with internally displaced women, who typically
were supporting families on their own. Since its
inception in 1998, Constata has served more than
20,000 disadvantaged microentrepreneurs.
In a recent survey of some of Constata’s 15,000
active clients, three-quarters of those surveyed reported
increases in income—and 92 percent of them
attributed that increase to the credit access that has
enabled them to tap into new economic opportunities.
Such microenterprise initiatives, multiplied
countless times, are spurring grassroots development
and advancing the status of poor women throughout
the world, be they a vegetable seller in Benin, a cook in
Russia, or a tailor in Mexico.
U.S. Congressman Christopher Smith, one of
the sponsors of the Microenterprise Results and
Accountability Act of 2004, believes that microenterprise
loans, which average $134, help women in the
world’s poorer nations overcome the many additional
obstacles they confront because of their sex by giving
them the means to support themselves and break the
cycle of poverty and discrimination.
“While these awards may seem small in our society,
the microcredit loans are key to the individuals
who received them,” Smith observed in an article he
wrote for Microenterprise: Laying the Foundation for
Economic Development (February 2004). “These loans
can make the difference by helping them develop their
own business, build their own homes, and care for
themselves.”
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