Institutional gender mainstreaming and strengthening of gender-lens investing activities in The Bahamas

Context

Women-led businesses report access to finance as a major obstacle to doing business, particularly because of collateral requirements. It is widely known that there is a very high proportion of micro, small and medium enterprises in the Caribbean, including The Bahamas, and that they face challenges in accessing the financing they need to innovate and scale up.

The Bahamas Development Bank (BDB) has requested support from the ICR Facility to review and improve how the institution is currently serving women. This support will align with national strategies on gender and effectively apply gender-lens investing principles that can lead to increased acces to capital for 2X categories of businesses.

Objective

The ICR Facility is providing tailor-made technical assistance to BDB to strenghten its internal-facing gender operations and client-facing gender-lens investing activities, to ultimately better serve women and women-led businesses in The Bahamas.

This intervention comprises two main areas of support:

Institutional gender mainstreaming. BDB will assess its current institutional progress with regards to gender, including both internal aspects, for example HR, and client-facing measures, for example the design of products and services. BDB will establish a plan to tackle the existing gaps and train stakeholders in its wider landscape on the gender-related changes that BDB will undergo.
Amending the M&E framework to become gender-responsive. Capturing, reporting and evaluating impactful data is a vital step in being able to better tailor services to reach more women as clients. BDB will transform its current M&E framework to better incorporate crucial data, set key performance indicators, redesign standard operating procedures, amongst others.

Results

Upon completion of this intervention, BDB will have:

Conducted an institutional gender assessment
Developed a revised gender policy, gender strategy, and action plan
Amended its existing M&E framework to become gender-responsive
Equipped staff members and direct stakeholders with capacity building on gender