The United States reaffirmed its belief in the importance of economic opportunities for women at the recent G-8 Forum for the Future, where the world's leading developed countries declared that "equality between men and women as well as access to global information technology are crucial to modernization and prosperity. A better-educated workforce is a key to active participation in a globalized world. We will focus our efforts to reduce illiteracy and increase access to education, especially for girls and women."

U.S. programs designed to advance women's economic empowerment are numerous. They range from programs that promote women's legal rights to rural programs that support sustainable development and resource management. Taken together, these programs demonstrate America's desire to enable women, no matter where they live, to have a chance to be free of poverty. U.S. initiatives also include funding for microenterprises and access to financial and business services, promoting economic freedom policies bilaterally and multilaterally, and encouraging developing countries to institute reforms that will unleash greater economic opportunities for women and men alike.

Microenterprise: Key Engine of Growth for Women

A particularly promising global phenomenon for women is the development of microenterprises — businesses of fewer than 10 employees (often including paid and unpaid family members) that are owned and operated by someone who is poor. These very small businesses are becoming key engines of economic development, spurring income growth and poverty reduction throughout the developing world.

The face of successful microenterprise: A farmer from Mozambique shows off her cashew crop. (USAID)

In many countries, particularly in Asia and Africa, the microenterprise sector constitutes the majority of the working population. No less than 90 percent of workers in India owe their livelihood to this segment of the economy, for example, while in Mexico microenterprises are responsible for 64 percent of total employment and 32 percent of gross domestic product.

The U.N. Commission on the Private Sector and Development, headed by Canada's Prime Minister Paul Martin and Mexico's former president, Ernesto Zedillo, found that small enterprises are an enormous and underutilized resource for economic development and poverty eradication, particularly for women. Its 2004 report, Unleashing Entrepreneurship: Making Business Work for the Poor, notes:

"In many developing countries, women constitute the majority of microentrepreneurs in the informal economy and a significant percentage of the formal sector. Many of them are illiterate and live in poor rural communities. And setting up their own enterprises — generally microenterprises — is usually the only possibility for them to be employed and earn an income on their own. In Latin America and the Caribbean between 25 percent and 35 percent of formal sector microenterprises and small and medium enterprises are owned and operated by women. In the Philippines women own 44 percent of the microenterprises, more than 80 percent in rural areas. In Zimbabwe women run the majority of microenterprises and small enterprises (67 percent), while enterprises run by men tend to provide proportionally more of the household income and have more employees."

At present, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) works in partnership with more than 500 American, host country, and international organizations around the world to spur the creation and development of microenterprises and deliver financial services to the poor. These programs focus on:

Research shows that most of the people who seek financing for extremely small businesses are women. Moreover, they are proving to be resourceful business owners and highly motivated savers who repay their loans at a higher rate than men.

The United States sees microenterprises as a foundation for building stable communities. Since 2000, average annual USAID funding for microenterprises has exceeded $150 million. In the 2002 fiscal year, this support reached more than 3.7 million microentrepreneurs, more than two-thirds of whom were women. In 2003, the United States signed into law the Microenterprise Enhancement Act, reaffirming the commitment of Congress to microenterprise development and directing USAID to fund microenterprise activities at the level of $200 million for Fiscal Year 2004.

Helping Women Farmers to Succeed

The vast majority of poor women live in rural areas where the primary income and livelihood sources are subsistence and smallholder agriculture. In developing countries, women comprise approximately 67 percent of the agricultural labor force. They are responsible for more than 55 percent of food production around the globe, although they own less than 2 percent of all land. Their productivity in agriculture is often hindered by a lack of access to formal and informal education, and difficulty in getting credit and increasing their capacity to produce.

Supporting Women Entrepreneurs Worldwide

Another U.S. effort to promote women's economic opportunities is the Bush administration's Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI). Its funding, for example, enables women from the Middle East and North Africa to participate in entrepreneurial training in the United States. Another program provides three-month internships at leading companies in the United States so that young women from the region can acquire management and business skills. A microcredit program for Palestinian women has provided 34,000 loans — worth more than $13 million — to help build sustainable businesses.

In Africa, the United States has supported women's business development under the U.S. African Growth and Opportunity Act and the Growth Through Engendering Enterprise program. The United States provides grants and technical assistance and sponsors workshops on international trade opportunities, the Internet, and financial management.

U.S.-funded programs for women also exist in East Asia and the Pacific. Women can receive training in organizational and management techniques in Cambodia and East Timor; economic self-sufficiency in Tibetan areas of China; and increased access to credit in the Philippines and Indonesia. The United States also works with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum to ensure women's interests are taken into account in its policies and projects.

In Europe, U.S. support for public-private partnerships helps provide job training for Roma women in Bulgaria, microcredit for women farmers in Azerbaijan, and networking opportunities for women in Russia's Far East. The United States recently helped to launch a Women Business Leaders Summit in the region, bringing women business owners from Belarus, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, and Ukraine together with their American counterparts to share their experiences.

Programs that the United States has developed for the newly freed and politically empowered women in Afghanistan and Iraq are also worth mentioning. They include:

In Iraq, the United States is providing $10 million in grants for the Iraqi Women's Democracy Initiative, a wide-ranging project that includes training in entrepreneurship and business management. At the Women's Centers opening up in Al-Kut, Diwaniyah, Karbala, Al-Hillah, Mosul, Najaf, and Sulaimaniya, women can, among other activities, attend computer and literacy classes, receive business and job-skills training and legal services, and obtain microcredit loans.

MCA: A New Compact for Global Development

In December 2002, President Bush unveiled a new compact for global development called the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA). This groundbreaking initiative aims to encourage policy reform, reduce poverty, and promote economic growth on a large scale. Through this new development assistance program, the United States will increase its levels of core assistance by 50 percent over the next three years, to reach an annual increase of $5 billion by Fiscal Year 2006. This funding will especially help women, who are disproportionately among the poor.

The key to receiving this increased assistance lies in meeting the MCA eligibility criteria. Countries must show policy performance in three areas: ruling justly, investing in their citizens, and encouraging economic freedom — because, as the international community has recognized, development assistance is most effective in countries with a sound policy framework. A country's protection of human rights and civil liberties, including for women, also matters. For example, girls' primary school completion rates are part of the selection criteria for Fiscal Year 2005, in recognition that investments in women and girls can be a significant contributor to poverty reduction and economic growth.

Morocco provides a good example. In announcing Morocco as a new entry to the Millennium Challenge Account in 2004, then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell pointed out that, among its other political, economic, and educational reforms, Morocco had passed "a family law that revolutionizes the rights of women."

MCA funds will supplement the current levels of assistance provided by USAID to developing countries like Morocco to help them open their economies to greater trade and foreign investment. As U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs E. Anthony Wayne pointed out, research shows that "where good governance and sound economic policies are in place, each dollar of foreign aid invested attracts two dollars of private investment."

As all these examples show, the range of U.S. initiatives to empower women economically is varied and broad. In all its trade and economic policies and agreements, the United States remains deeply committed to helping women around the world gain the skills and knowledge they need to become engines of economic growth as entrepreneurs and business leaders.

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