Global Challenges Facing Female Entrepreneurs

The Guidehouse gender+ series features brief pieces written by Guidehouse practitioners. Through this series, Guidehouse aims to explore the intersection of gender and a variety of international development focus areas in order to review opportunities for greater development impact and to feature the solutions we have offered our clients that can be leveraged in this space.

Guidehouse is excited to share our first thought piece of the gender+ series focused on entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs—defined here as an individual or organization that takes on financial risk in hopes of making a profit and/or return on investment—are key drivers of growth in developing economies. Women entrepreneurs face unique challenges across the globe, limiting their potential as individuals and the potential of the global economy. One of these challenges is access to markets1 by women entrepreneurs who own and operate small and medium enterprises in lower and middle income countries.

This piece explores various mechanisms that have been taken advantage of to improve women entrepreneurs’ access to markets.