This booklet presents gender equality as ?smart economics? and demonstrates how private sector interventions can promote gender equality. Practical ways of overcoming obstacles to women?s full entry into the private sector are illustrated with cases stories from a sector programme in Ghana, private sector interventions for poor women in Bolivia, a network of businesswomen in Vietnam and a credit scheme in Benin.
Private sector development is a key engine of economic growth and crucial to reducing poverty. Women and girls make up threefifths of the world?s one billion poorest people. Promoting women?s participation in the labour force and increasing women?s incomes hold a critical potential for poverty reduction and economic growth, including in the rebuilding of postconflict societies. The ?informal economy? has traditionally played the dominant role in women?s employment. This need not be so. Women?s economic empowerment in formal economic sectors such as agriculture, transport and finance has a key role to play in poverty reduction and development. See Booklet 5.1 for details on gender equality in agriculture.
