Supporting Women-Owned Businesses through Business Environment Reforms

Investing in women is not only a moral imperative – it is good business. Business creation and business revenue growth are crucial engines of economic growth and job creation. Advancing gender equality can add $13 trillion to global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2030. However, women are less likely than men to own formal micro, small- or medium-sized enterprises. Moreover, women-owned businesses are less likely to grow or have employees and have been more heavily affected by the Covid-19 crisis. The hindrances to women-owned small and medium enterprises are multidimensional and often interlinked.

Supporting Women-Owned Businesses Through Business Environment Reforms

Upcoming events

By supporting business climate and investment environment reforms, the ICR Facility aims to help generate more decent jobs and contribute to improving livelihoods in African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries.

Training on Business Environment Reforms to Support Women’s Economic Empowerment

Women's Economic Empowerment

Training on Busines Environment Reforms to Support Women’s Economic Empowerment What? The course develops awareness and provides tools to advance Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) through Business Environment Reform (BER) in African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. Participants learn to apply a gender-sensitive and gender-transformative lens when they work on their own reforms, taking into account […]

How to develop a gender approach in Development Finance Institutions

Access to Finance

What? In these free, self-paced training modules you will learn how to develop a gender finance approach in the development finance institution. It is an interactive way to learn more about institutional gender mainstreaming, actions and measures to be taken in the organization to ensure gender inclusion. The training contains videos, texts, interactive exercises and […]

Training on Business Environment Reforms Tools

Business Regulation and Policy

In these self-paced modules in “Business Environment Reform Tools”, representatives from public and private stakeholders in African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) countries will learn how to use practical and straight-forward tools to improve the business environment in African, Caribbean and Pacific countries. You will earn a PDF certificate once you pass all the tasks of the four modules. […]

You may also be interested in these ICReports

An Event for Change: Gaps and Solutions to Advance Women’s Economic Empowerment

During the 05 and 06 June 2024, the ICR4WEE Conference welcomed over 140 participants, inclusive of attendees from 36 ACP countries, in Kigali, Rwanda. This ICReport provides a comprehensive overview of the Conference, and reflects upon the critical topics examined throughout the two days of interactive panel discussion and debate, including: Gender-sensitive industrial policies […]

Evidence-based studies in selected OACPS countries

Overview The Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS) comprises a group of countries with very different economic profiles, ranging from fast growing economies to a significant number of least developed countries. Even those regions or countries that in the past years had experienced sustainable economic growth, are met with challenges regarding increasing poverty […]

Training guide gender auditing – Malawi

Accompanying the ICReport Learnings from the gender audit – Malawi is our training guide for facilitators planning to deliver training for businesses, HR professionals and individuals interested in developing gender-sensitive workplaces. Gender inequality has a negative economic impact on workplaces. It can lead to high levels of staff turnover, absenteeism and it can affect […]

Learnings from the gender audit in the workplace – Malawi

This ICReport is based on the Gender Audit in the Workplace Report – Malawi which the ICR Facility produced as part of technical assistance to the Employers’ Consultative Association of Malawi (ECAM). It aims to highlight the key learnings from this ICR Facility intervention which will be useful to other countries, organisations and consultants that […]

You may also be interested in these ICR Stories

How is the ICR Facility supporting women’s voices in Public-Private Dialogue (PPD)? And why is it still needed?

The ICR Facility is supporting its partners to increase women’s participation in public-private dialogues. Our new ICReport How to make the Business Environment work for Women’s Economic Empowerment builds on an earlier publication Promoting Women’s Organisations into Public-Private Dialogues in order to Foster Women’s Economic Empowerment in ACP Countries and demonstrates how the recommendations made can […]

How is the ICR Facility supporting gender equality at the workplace, and why is it still needed?

The ICR Facility is supporting its partners to increase women’s participation in the labour force. Our new ICReport How to make the Business Environment work for Women’s Economic Empowerment builds on an earlier publication Business Environment Reforms to Promote Equal Opportunities for Women in the Labour Market and demonstrates how the recommendations made can be implemented […]

How are Development Finance Institutions Empowering Women Entrepreneurs? And how is the ICR Facility supporting DFIs to do so?

The ICR Facility is supporting its partners to increase women’s economic empowerment (WEE) by facilitating their access to finance. Our new ICReport How to make the Business Environment work for Women’s Economic Empowerment builds on an earlier publication Trends in Gender Finance in African Caribbean and Pacific Development Finance Institutions and demonstrates how the recommendations made […]

How to make business environment reforms as gender transformative as possible? Lessons learnt from the ICR Facility

The ICR Facility is supporting its partners to increase women’s economic empowerment. But it is not always easy to get interest in this topic. It is often still seen as a lower priority for a country’s economic development and it is complex to tackle. Our new ICReport How to make the Business Environment work for […]

You may also be interested in these event recordings

Business Environment Reforms through Public- Private Dialogue – Lessons learnt from the ICR Facility’s Interventions

The ICR Facility supports governments, public agencies and private sector representative bodies in African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) countries to improve their business environment on the basis of Public-Private Dialogue (PPD). PPD is an effective tool to enhance collaboration between public and private actors. It is a continuous and semi-structured process that brings together various […]

ICR4WEE Conference

The Investment Climate Reform (ICR) Facility has organised the ICR4WEE Conference on 5-6 June 2024. The event focused on creating better legal, institutional, and regulatory conditions for businesses to grow and operate, as well as to improve women’s participation in policy-making processes. Building on its successful activities and the dynamic networks it has established across African, Caribbean […]

Webinar: Trends in Care Economy Policies in African, Caribbean and Pacific countries

The Care Economy — including childcare, eldercare and domestic work — is vital to society, yet it remains invisible, undervalued, and unevenly distributed. The disproportionate share of care and domestic work that falls on women and girls, especially when it is unpaid, is a key barrier to their participation in the workforce and negatively impacts […]

Business Environment Reform for Supporting Young Entrepreneurs: Opportunities for the ACP Region

Many countries in the ACP (Africa, Caribbean and Pacific) region have made supporting young entrepreneurs a top priority for economic development and youth employment. Despite this, young entrepreneurs face challenging business conditions and complicated policy and regulatory contexts in launching and running their businesses. This webinar hosted by the ICR Facility provided an opportunity for […]

Contact us