Source: Asia Development Bank
Gender-inclusive entrepreneurship in South Asia remains hindered by financial, social, and structural barriers. A holistic approach—combining access to finance, business development services, and multi-stakeholder partnerships—can accelerate women’s entrepreneurship and foster inclusive growth.
While gender-inclusive entrepreneurship is a significant enabler of economic growth, only 18% of firms in South Asia are owned by women, compared to 34% globally. Women in the region lack capital and finance, as well as opportunities to access business networks and effectively market products and services. They have limited engagement in trade activities and with innovative solutions.
These challenges are compounded by structural barriers, such as social and customary norms and disproportionate household and care responsibilities that limit women’s opportunities as entrepreneurs and hinder their economic participation.
The following approaches, which should be tailored to distinct contexts, cultures, and levels of development, can help boost women’s entrepreneurship in South Asia:
Create an inclusive business ecosystem: Accelerating women’s entrepreneurship in South Asia, a region with complexities and inequalities intertwined, requires development of an ecosystem of inclusive interventions and investments, policies, private sector engagement, and promoting resources that give women access to capital, skills, innovation, services and new markets.
Access to finance for women has positive direct and indirect impact on business and economic empowerment, reducing poverty, and achieving good health and well-being.
Addressing only one issue in the chain of challenges cannot produce a sustainable effect; rather, adopting a holistic approach that creates an enabling environment by explicitly addressing constraints of women and promoting women’s entrepreneurship through specific actions is essential for long-term strategic changes that can support inclusive economic growth and development in South Asia.
Providing access to finance for women can be life changing: Limited financial resources confine women to smaller-scale business operations at the micro level in countries such as Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and Bangladesh. Challenges related to capital are often rooted in gender biases, lack of tailored financial products, absence of collateral, and limited understanding of financial institutions.
Applying innovations in finance, more targeted approaches, including for women in more vulnerable positions, can help overcome the barriers related to social norms, mobility, and control of resources and assets. While 65% of women-led small and medium enterprises in developing countries are unserved financially, access to finance for women has positive direct and indirect impact on business and economic empowerment, reducing poverty, and achieving good health and well-being.
Providing targeting approaches and giving access to finance has been done in Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bhutan and has helped women to expand and grow their businesses. Targeting women as clients has a business case as well, offering opportunities for the private sector to capitalize on this important segment by providing tailored financial products and services.
Offer comprehensive business development services: Because women-owned enterprises are under-financed and under-resourced in South Asia, offering non-financial services can be a driver of business growth. Business development services, such as mentoring, financial advisory, legal support, skills training, and accessing new markets and networks can be key drivers for women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh, Maldives, Sri Lanka, and other South Asian countries.
Providing tailored services for women in start-ups is equally important as challenges at this stage are intertwined with a lack of confidence, social norms, and expectations towards women with limited resources. While also facing other forms of discrimination (particularly, in India and Nepal), supplying women with these services can lead to more equitable access to non-financial resources and significant economic growth on local and regional levels.
Leverage multi-stakeholder partnerships: Development partners, governments, and private sector companies – all can play role in advancing women’s entrepreneurship in South Asia. Gender-inclusive investments by development partners, improving policy frameworks by governments, and fostering bold actions by the private sector through targeted investments and financial products can all address the gender divide in entrepreneurship. Moreover, partnerships across stakeholders can only enhance these actions.
The path to advancing women’s entrepreneurship and engagement of stakeholders needs to be deepened to also address often discriminatory underlying social norms and practices that hold women back. This is particularly so in South Asia, where gender disparities are intertwined with religion, caste, ethnicity, and other social exclusions that exacerbate gender inequalities.