Training may improve skills, such as adopting business practices, but it does not always translate into improved business outcomes.A likely reason for these heterogenous findings is that different entrepreneurs face different sets of constraints, depending on their needs, experience level, personal characteristics, grits, and business models for both growth-oriented and necessity-oriented entrepreneurs.

The world is experiencing a digital revolution and anticipating its potential to improve women’s empowerment. However, studies found that women are still struggling to enter the digital ecosystem due to many factors. This blog—previously published as an op-ed piece at The Jakarta Post—outlined women’s limited participation in the digital economy and the policy recommendations to close the digital gender gap. MSC took part in drafting the policy recommendations and discussed them in detail at the G20 Ministerial Conference on Women’s Empowerment (MCWE) in Bali last August 2022.

In partnership with BRI (Bank Rakyat Indonesia), MSC connected BRILink agents to cooperatives under the Women Digital Ambassadors (WDA) project. The linking was part of our efforts to increase the accessibility of financial products and services for Indonesia’s rural women. We used MSC’s Datin app to monitor and evaluate each agent’s transactions and generate findings from the field. These findings allowed us to identify opportunities and challenges in linking agents to women cooperatives, which we distilled in our new blog. Read it here.

Cooperatives are often encouraged to embrace modernization and digitalization. Yet, how prepared are they to undertake this journey? The problem tends to be more challenging, especially for women’s cooperatives in the rural areas, which are constrained in terms of access and skills to use digital platforms.