Using Digital Solutions to Address Barriers to Female Entrepreneurship

Women’s economic advancement is critical to meeting key development goals and plays a central role for many development institutions, including the World Bank Group. To effectively design and implement interventions focused on women entrepreneurship — whether policies or programs — policy makers and project teams require effective knowledge and instruments. This toolkit responds to this need. It provides practical guidance to analyze, design, and measure technology-enabled solutions to advance women’s entrepreneurship. Its detailed instructions and resources are intended to help implementers to use thorough diagnostic processes to unearth key constraints to female entrepreneurship, including barriers to technology access and use. It also lays out intervention recommendations that incorporate digital technology — all illustrated by project examples. Finally, it provides a menu of indicators and advice for monitoring project results.