Secretary of State Hillary Clinton once again emphasized the need for women to be incorporated into the global economy at the APEC Women and Economy Forum.

Secretary Clinton remarks on APEC’s commitment to women’s financial inclusion

Government, business, and academic representatives attended the forum, held on June 29 at the Catherine Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia, from each of the 21 APEC member countries.

In her 2011 APEC conference remarks, Clinton called for APEC members to tap into the potential of women’s contribution to economies by committing to removing the obstacles that block women’s access to markets.

This year, Secretary Clinton followed up on how APEC has already made progress towards fully tapping into this potential. Clinton outlined two main ways that APEC is supporting these efforts: opening doors for procurement policies that support women-owned businesses and making it easier for women to acquire credit.

Clinton emphasized the potential that governments’ purchasing power has for supporting women-owned businesses. In order to foster these policies, she stated that APEC is “working with the United Nations International Trade Center to improve the ability of APEC governments to source from women-owned businesses.”

To support the suitability of women-owned businesses for government contracts, Clinton recognized that APEC must “work to help governments see how they can help build the capacity of women entrepreneurs to meet the needs of large-scale buyers.”

Second, Clinton addressed the obstacles women face in acquiring credit. “We are joining with expert partners to train central and commercial banks throughout the Asia Pacific in inclusive lending practices so that women can access finance and capital.”

Just a year after signing the San Francisco declaration, APEC has taken concrete steps towards recognizing its commitment to women.  La Pietra Coalition applauds these efforts and looks forward to tracking APEC’s progress to greater incorporate women in the global economy.

Photo courtesy of the State Department.

Secretary Clinton discusses the necessity of closing the gender data gap.
Photo courtesy of the State Department.

“If we’re serious about narrowing the gender gap and helping more girls and women, then we must get serious about gathering and analyzing the data that tell the tale.”

Such thinking encompasses the thesis of remarks by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week at “Evidence and Impact: Closing the Gender Data Gap,” an event co-hosted by the State Department and Gallup.

World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim, Gallup Chairman and CEO Jim Clifton, State Department Counselor and Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, and U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer joined Secretary Clinton in a major display of thought partnership on the next big step in global women’s empowerment.

While research demonstrates that investing in women delivers a wide range of positive outcomes for entire societies, vast gaps in statistics remain about women and girls’ economic, political, and social status.  As one example, Clinton noted we can estimate how many people use the internet worldwide but we do not disaggregate this information to compare usage by males and females.

Without such data, Clinton said, “We are missing critical information to guide our investments better… And since women make up half the population, that’s like having a black hole at the center of our data-driven universe.”

To further this vision, panelists announced several specific actions:

First, Secretary Clinton launched Data 2x, an initiative by the Departmet of State that will develop principles and standards for collecting and using gender-sensitive data to help close the gender data gap. Second, President Kim unveiled that the World Bank will make available a gender data portal to serve as a centralized location for a large range of gender data from a variety of sources. President Kim also gave a concrete goal for the next year: “One year from now, let’s commit to seeing progress in data availability in two areas – women’s economic opportunities, and women’s voice and agency – for at least 10 countries where that data are currently missing.”  Gallup offered its support to utilize the data they produce for gender-disaggregated reports.

La Pietra Coalition applauds the movement to delve deeper into understanding the gender gap around the world, a necessary condition for evidence-based policy recommendations to foster equality.

The MCC is working with Lesotho’s government to pave the path for gender equality for Basotho women. Photo courtesy of The Millennium Challenge Corporation.

Ensuring property rights for women worldwide is vital for building a strong economic foundation for developing countries to succeed in the global economy. Without access to property or legal titles of land, women are at an extreme disadvantage and are marginalized from participating in the formal economy, accessing credit, and private sector investment in their businesses. Acknowledging this issue, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has initiated a groundbreaking Land Reform program in Lesotho in order to stimulate private sector investment. Working in conjunction with the Lesotho government, the MCC is following through on a five-year, $363 million compact to reform the country’s land and legal sectors.

By registering land parcels currently informally occupied by citizens, both the MCC and the government hope to make Lesotho’s economy more attractive to private investment, while also insuring formal land security and enabling them to use land titles as capital for loans and credit.

The MCC specifically prioritizes land rights for women, recognizing that legal reform is needed in the arena of property ownership in order to expand women’s participation in Lesotho’s economic growth. In harmonization with Lesotho’s own Legal Capacity of Married Persons Act, which removed the minority status of women in the eyes of the government in 2006, the compact is working to provide women with educational tools and awareness of their new legal status and the opportunities for economic growth that accompany it. Furthermore, the MCC is working with the government to create conditions for joint titling, which is just a small step towards full gender equality for women in the region.

Learn more about MCC In Action in Lesotho.

Following the strongest commitment yet by the G-20 to promote financial gender equality, today in Forbes Tom Watson explains La Pietra Coalition’s role in helping this come to fruition.  He goes on to note the significance of this latest pronouncement by the world’s global leaders:

“…[W]hile the headlines around the G20′s work center on issues like Europe’s troubled economic policy and climate change, the section on women and development is the kind of breakthrough that recognizes a social and political shift that is already well underway.”

Specifically, the G-20 noted as point #23 in its overall post-Summit communique:

“We commit to take concrete actions to overcome the barriers hindering women’s full economic and social participation and to expand economic opportunities for women in G20 economies. We also express our firm commitment to advance gender equality in all areas, including skills training, wages and salaries, treatment in the workplace, and responsibilities in care-giving.”

Later, point #53 states:

“We recognize the need for women and youth to gain access to financial services and financial education, ask the GPFI, the OECD/INFE, and the World Bank to identify barriers they may face and call for a progress report to be delivered by the next Summit.”

Congratulations to the Coalition and all of its supporters for this victory – although the real work is still ahead of us.

Read more at Forbes or at TheThirdBillion.org.

Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard delivers a speech during a B20 meeting prior to the G20 Summit in Los Cabos, Sunday, June 17, 2012. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

By Heather Kipnis

The G20 meets this week in Mexico, just two months after the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors acknowledged in their April 2012 Communiqué – for the first time ever – the need to address women’s access to finance.  This is a major breakthrough. Women play a critical role in the global economy as producers, consumers, employees, and entrepreneurs.  The woman entrepreneur has become recognized as the gateway to household stability with access to finance as the catalyst.

Women entrepreneurs invest their businesses’ profits in ways that have a longer-lasting, more profound impact on the lives of their families and communities.  Studies show that women tend to prioritize their children’s needs more than men do, propelling greater intergenerational benefits. In order to increase income, women entrepreneurs desperately need access to finance. Microfinance has served as an effective tool to help marginalized women start businesses.  However, a woman who successfully grows her microenterprise often finds herself stuck when she moves towards the small and medium stages – too big to access microfinance and too small and risky to access finance from formal commercial banks.  According to International Finance Corporation (IFC), 24-29% of formal, women-owned small to medium enterprises (SMEs) in emerging markets claim that access to finance is their biggest barrier to growth and development.  The acuteness of this measure is compounded by the fact that women-owned SMEs represent 31-38% of formal enterprises in emerging markets, and that formal SMEs contribute up to 45% of jobs and up to 33% of GDP in developing countries.

There is real potential for women-owned SMEs to spur economic growth, but it depends upon a country’s ability to invest in interventions that encourage SME financing, particularly for women.  The UN estimates that failure to achieve promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women could reduce per capita income growth rates by 0.1–0.3 percentage points.

So if we have a strong economic case for women’s financial inclusion, and leaders like the G20 Finance Ministers recognize the need for greater access to finance, why aren’t we seeing more governments and private institutions take action?  Well, the challenges are significant.

First, we lack consistent baseline data measuring SMEs’ demand for financial services.  Although development finance institutions, in particular IFC, have made huge strides in assessing the global status of SME Banking (i.e. estimating the total unmet credit needs by all formal and informal SMEs) and The World Bank and Gallup have partnered to create Global Findex, an index that focuses on supply side indicators of financial inclusion around the globe, such data is not fully gender-disaggregated among other limitations.  In an era that strives to decide policies based on evidence, this dearth of data inhibits governments and private institutions from investing in women.

Second, business conditions in many emerging markets do not facilitate women accessing growth capital to lead strong and profitable businesses.  Restrictive legal environments may not permit women to own property and consequently they cannot produce collateral for loans.  Complex practices by financial institutions can appear more cumbersome than they are worth – in some countries it can take 15 visits by a woman to a bank to acquire a loan, versus 2.25 visits with family and friends.

A third reason is by far the most challenging: underlying cultural and social norms can constrain opportunities for women.  Restrictions on mobility, greater time demanded to perform household and child care activities, limited formal education as well as business and financial literacy, and less work experience may negatively impact the bankability of a women entrepreneur.

Action expresses priorities.  Despite these challenges, the potential to achieve greater economic growth is too great not to take action.  Governments alone cannot influence an investment climate favorable to women, nor can the solution rely upon financial institutions. Global impact requires collective action.  Leaders from academia, governments, corporations, foundations, and non-profit organizations must work together on women’s access to finance.  Organizations such as La Pietra Coalition work towards such cooperation.  Let’s move beyond declarations and acknowledgments to actively collaborate and determine tangible, time-bound, measurable goals that will increase the delivery of financials products and services to women-owned SMEs.  Only then will we raise the status of women and move towards sustainable economic prosperity for all.

Heather Kipnis is an Independent Consultant in SME Banking and Women’s Access to Finance, and was a Spring 2012 La Pietra Coalition Fellow.  Follow her on Twitter.

Our Future, Our Third Billion.

“Many of these women still lack formal financial services. They carry the high risk of hiding their money in their cupboards or under their pillows. Many do pay fees for saving collectors to pick up their 10 cents of saving each day because they live too far from a bank or are too intimidated to go into one. These women lack access to a safe and low-cost financial institution, a household basis for stable growth.  All of this needs to change.”

We couldn’t agree more.  Check out this great blog post on the Third Billion Campaign.  Thanks for your interest and support – we’re excited to keep up the conversation!