Addressing the gender divide through inclusive business

The women are seated around a large table, in a conference room in a run-down hotel on the edges of Kisumu in Kenya’s west. There are twelve of them, all entrepreneurs with dreams, ideas and ambitions, with business ideas ranging from banana imports from Uganda and arranging weddings, to selling phone cards from a kiosk and growing tomatoes. In fact, many of these women have more than one business idea – sometimes, given the opportunity, there is no end to their innovative thinking. What if we can partner to sell bananas and tomatoes together? What if you hire me to supply your weddings with bananas? What if I can set up a kiosk for phone cards in your village? It’s exciting to listen to them; exciting, inspiring and engaging at the same time. I’m here as an observer but also as an advisor – how can they improve their businesses, make them grow, earn them more money, encompass at least some of their dreams?

Last year we ran a pilot project entitled Women in Inclusive Business. One of our first projects as an organisation, we focused on business advice and support for female entrepreneurs from Kisumu, but also from Göteborg, Sweden – and thanks to the wonders of the internet, we connected these two groups to livechat about business development and what it is like to be a woman and an entrepreneur (and that experience turned out to be very similar, no matter where you are from and where you are running your business). Despite numerous attempts, securing funding for a follow-up of this project turned out to be an impossibility – but running this, it got me thinking. What does inclusive business mean for gender development? What can we learn from inclusive business models in terms of gender development? And how can we address the gender divide through inclusive business?

But first – a clarification of terms. ‘Gender inequality’ is the unequal treatment or perceptions of individuals based on their gender, says Wikipedia; moreover, states the United Nations Development Programme:

Gender inequality remains a major barrier to human development. (…) All too often, women and girls are discriminated against in health, education, political representation, labour market etc – with negative repercussions for development of their capabilities and their freedom of choice.

It has long been known that gender inequality is one of the greatest barriers to poverty eradication on a global level. By the microfinance institutions, we are told that women-led businesses show higher repayment rates; there is research to suggest that women’s management style differs from men’s in a way that benefits business, and women are more likely to hire other women, which promotes gender equality across the community and can result in greater levels of women’s participation in household decision-making.

But this is true of ‘business’ in the most general, and broad, sense of the term. How can inclusive business be any different? Well, the core of inclusive business is that it reaches more people than business as usual, even those who are often excluded from participating in economic activities, such as women.

In sum, we gathered the following learning experiences from our project Women in Inclusive Business:

1. Female-led businesses often support a greater number of people (ie. large and extended families)
2. A greater willingness to support each other’s business than was expected
3. Terms like ‘entrepreneurship’ and ‘business development’ did not attract much interest or understanding – but for the group, this is what highlighted their experiences
4. Inclusive business models attracted more attention from the group than did traditional models, as they directly empowered women on a local level

Please note, however, that these learnings come from a project supporting women in their entrepreneurial endeavours, but there are also findings from other initiatives around the world supporting the role of women in other parts of the inclusive business value chains. One of these is the Women as Inclusive Business Partners initiative by BoP Inc, which found not only that women often make reliable employees because they put their families’ needs first – but also that women are better able to reach female customers. The employment of women can therefore lead to an increase in sales as women are attracted to buy – which also, then, engages them as customers. With their families’ needs closest to heart, women may also make better sales representatives.

As for my thoughts about gender development and inclusive business, however, I have no clear answer beyond this: inclusive business benefits women, as long as the business models take their interests to heart – and women benefit inclusive business. And in this space, there is clearly room for more research, more funding and more projects – or, in other words, more inclusive business for more women.

Want to read more on this topic? Try the EmpowerWomen site.