Discussion topics include:
“Helping Low-Income Women Access Enterprise Development Services”
Proceedings from an on-line discussion from July 12 – August 15, 2004
Proceedings from an on-line discussion from July 12 – August 15, 2004
Objectives of Discussion:
To exchange experiences and frameworks from different development fields that can provide low-income women with business services to improve family livelihoods.
To share practical experiences, cases, and strategies that have helped low-income women access appropriate enterprise development services.
To brainstorm innovative solutions to the challenge of reaching low-income women with beneficial enterprise development services.
To facilitate improved understanding, relationships, and dialogue among practitioners in different fields who are concerned with improving the lives of low-income women in developing countries.
To develop a research agenda for the next steps to furthering these objectives.
Existing situations and initiatives for low-income business women.
Potential for applying Best Practice BDS to overcome challenges to helping low income women improve their livelihoods
Potential for addressing social, personal and other development challenges to entrepreneurship and market development
Recently Added Documents
Reaching Low-Income Women with Enterprise Development Services: Challenges and Opportunities
Through an email listserv discussion, the BDS Working Group of the SEEP Network sought to explore effective ways for BDS market development initiatives to benefit low-income women. Three central themes framed the discussion focus: 1) the existing context and BDS initiatives to target low-income women; 2) the potential for BDS to overcome the business challenges facing low-income women; and 3) the potential for BDS practitioners to address the social, personal, and other challenges inhibiting low-income women.
Reaching Low Income Women, Discussion Synthesis
Low-income women in developing countries rely heavily on commercial, small-scale farm and home-based microenterprises for their family livelihood. The field of business development services (BDS) attempts to help microentrepreneurs stabilize and grow their businesses by providing them with access to a range of critical services from training to technology, market access, and infrastructure. Best practices in BDS recommend developing commercial, business-to-business service markets as the most sustainable way to reach large numbers of microenterprises. One critique of this “BDS market development approach” is that the approach is not effective at reaching low-income microentrepreneurs. In particular, low-income women microentrepreneurs are perceived to be largely disconnected from BDS markets due to cultural and social constraints. The discussion focus on ways to effectively reach women with BDS services.
Reaching Low-Income Women with Enterprise Development Services: Challenges and Opportunities
Background document and discussion questions for the Gender and BDS online discussion.