This report highlights the gaps in ecosystem support for women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh. Awareness of available programs remains low, especially for finance, mentoring, and market linkages. Even when accessed, effectiveness varies. Only 20% of business owners meet at least three key needs, while half remain unsupported. Gender disparities persist, particularly in financial access and legal support. Policymakers must enhance gender-inclusive initiatives, improve outreach, and create unified support frameworks to bridge these gaps and promote sustainable business growth.
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In small businesses, male and female business owners are more alike than we think
Women-owned businesses are inferior to those owned by men—both in terms of their owners’ confidence and business practices. This unfortunate sexist notion found prominence among people we interviewed in our research globally and, more recently, in Bangladesh. Data from the Women Business Diaries project in Bangladesh suggests a persistent perception that female business owners lack the aspiration, structure, or success of their male counterparts. Such misconceptions limit the potential of women-led enterprises and stifle their ability to scale, innovate, and contribute significantly to the economy.
Despite policy interventions, financial service providers often make credit decisions for women-led businesses based on the influence of male family members, especially for collateral-based or larger loans. This was a key finding that our previous blog covered in MSC’s Bangladesh study. Moreover, many banking professionals tend to trust women’s financial and business management skills less than men. Bureaucratic hurdles and gender bias raise barriers for women when they seek trade licenses, which restricts their access to affordable loans and opportunities for business growth.
The analysis of the Women Business Diaries project led us to select businesses with similar characteristics and focused on a diarist’s monthly income, expense, and profit. We removed outliers using the Interquartile Range (IQR) method to reduce the influence of extreme values and ensure a more homogenous sample. Next, we used an Euclidean distance algorithm to match each male diarist with a similar female diarist. This approach resulted in a refined dataset of 52 male and 75 female comparable diarists.
From the analysis, we found that women entrepreneurs are just as capable and ambitious as their male peers. Female business owners adopt similar practices, show equal confidence in key business areas, and share comparable aspirations for growth. The findings challenge stereotypes about women being less driven or effective in business.
Female business owners follow business practices akin to their male counterparts
Both women and men prioritize essential business metrics—financial management, growth, and operational consistency—and exhibit strikingly comparable approaches.
- Record-keeping: How women and men maintain their business records differ slightly, although the overall approach of both genders is almost identical.
- Supply chain management: Both male and female business owners favor direct supplier interactions and often place orders in person. Any differences in order frequency and supplier network size are negligible.
- Customer management and demand patterns: Both genders source from local markets. Both male and female business owners experience high demand during peak periods, such as Eid. Both deal with increased customer visits to their stores to place and collect orders.
- Money management behavior: Business owners of both genders actively plan for future expenses by setting aside funds. Cash management practices show similarity, with both groups maintaining similar cash reserves. Savings behavior also parallels, with 37% of male and 36% of female business owners saving in banks over a six-month period (Oct 2023 – Feb 2024). The median deposit amount is nearly identical, at BDT 1,300 (USD 11) for women and BDT 1,250 (USD 10) for men.
The figures below give a snapshot of our detailed findings across these four practices.
The gender-based difference in confidence levels in key business areas is almost zero
Confidence levels across essential business functions are nearly identical between male and female business owners. These functions include supply chain management, customer relations, record-keeping, and interactions with financial service providers. Notably, women entrepreneurs display a strong, consistent level of self-assurance when they negotiate with suppliers, manage customer expectations, or handle finances, which challenges the stereotype that they may lack confidence in business management.
Male- and female-owned businesses have similar aspirations and approaches to business growth
Both male and female business owners share similar investment priorities and focus on upgrades, such as shop infrastructure improvements and inventory expansion. This indicates that growth strategies are aligned across genders. Both male and female entrepreneurs prioritize reinvestment in their businesses to enhance operations and meet increasing demand. Close to six in 10 female and male business owners invested in growth activities between April 2023 and April 2024.
Additionally, the percentage of businesses that experienced significant revenue growth is comparable between genders.
We analyzed the significant growth or decline using revenue data gathered through daily diaries and evaluated using the Mann Kendal trend test. These findings show that female entrepreneurs thrive at par with their male counterparts under comparable structural systems, such as markets and support mechanisms.
The key takeaway for stakeholders—donors, policymakers, and practitioners—is the urgent need to strengthen or establish structural systems that are inclusive and effective for both women and men.
We must find ways to address this critical gap to build equitable and sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems. For example, nearly 50% of diarists reported that none of their critical entrepreneurship needs were met, and only 1% had all their critical needs fulfilled. These needs span six key ecosystem areas: Entrepreneurship promotion, access to finance, business and technical skills, mentoring and networking, market linkages, and legal support. Addressing these gaps is essential for women entrepreneurs to reach their full potential.
In the next part of this blog, we will dive deeper into the needs of these female entrepreneurs.
From surviving to thriving: How stakeholders can meet the unmet needs of Bangladesh’s women entrepreneurs
In the first part of this blog series, we highlighted how female entrepreneurs exhibit the same confidence, capability, and drive as their male counterparts to challenge stereotypes and demonstrate their potential. This blog highlights that systemic barriers that emerge from poor support programs impede their progress, such as limited financial access, lack of mentorship, and insufficient market linkages.
Women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh and elsewhere worldwide grapple with persistent gender-based challenges in their daily lives. Yet they exhibit strong confidence, business management skills, and determination through which they can drive growth, provided they receive the right support. As discussed in the earlier blog in this series, both genders share similar confidence levels, business practices, and aspirations. However, women face systemic barriers that hinder their ability to compete on equal terms and hold back their potential to thrive.
We conducted a study in Bangladesh to understand how these challenges are being addressed at the ecosystem level. Through the study, we assessed how policymakers and other stakeholders meet the critical support needs of women entrepreneurs. We used MSC’s Ecosystem Needs Framework and insights from the Women Business Diaries project to explore six key areas of the entrepreneurial ecosystem:
- Entrepreneurship promotion
- Access to finance
- Business and technical skills
- Mentoring and networking
- Market linkages
- Legal support
We further evaluated each of these ecosystem components based on three key parameters:
Awareness: Is the business owner aware of any initiatives related to these ecosystem needs?
Usage: If the business owner is aware, did they use the service or benefit from the initiative?
Effectiveness: If the business owner used the service or availed of the initiative, how effective did they find it?
The table below summarizes our findings. It illustrates the proportion of women entrepreneurs whose needs are being met across these six ecosystem components based on the three parameters.
Additionally, the research also highlighted that
- Business owners whose ecosystem needs are met are more likely to engage in growth-oriented actions, while those with unmet needs report lower levels of such activity.
- Business owners with more ecosystem needs fulfilled experience higher sales and profits.
- However, only 1% of female business owners have all six needs fully met.
The findings are not encouraging. For almost all ecosystem needs, less than 50% of business owners had access to any government or private sector program. These numbers are even lower on effectiveness, which indicates that the programs’ design does not match the gaps. Our discussions reveal that many women rely on informal networks, for funds, such as family and friends, who may lack the expertise to help navigate business challenges.
A major barrier for women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh is a lack of awareness of available support programs. Despite various government and NGO-led initiatives, many women remain in the dark about the resources that could help them access finance, mentorship, and market linkages—all essential for growth. For example, the Women Entrepreneurship Development Unit (WEDU) at the Bangladesh Bank seeks to enhance access to finance through specialized financial products, training, and mentorship for women entrepreneurs. Yet, only a handful of the respondents knew of the programs that lead banks offered through the WEDU.
Similarly, despite the existence of market linkage programs, such as Women and E-commerce, and NGOs, such as the SME Foundation and Joyeeta, only two in 10 respondents knew about any market linkage programs. Their low awareness levels limit the use of such initiatives. However, the trends indicate that most women who are aware of such programs use them.
More worrisome is the fact that less than 20% of respondents find most programs effective, which underscores significant challenges in program design. Findings from qualitative discussions revealed that these initiatives often fail to accommodate the needs of women, which makes it difficult for them to attend the sessions or benefit from them.
Key barriers include inconvenient scheduling, irrelevant or overly generic content, limited opportunities for participant feedback, and a lack of sensitivity from trainers. Such shortcomings reveal a critical gap: Many programs are not developed through a gender-sensitive lens. This oversight limits their ability to address systemic inequities or empower women effectively.
Many would expect “Ease of access to finance” to be viewed more positively than the other enablers. Yet, our discussions highlighted how women faced under-financing; delays in disbursement; difficult and exclusionary terms and conditions; minimal options for tenure, grace period, and other key terms; and high interest rates—particularly from microfinance institutions. All these challenges were amplified by women’s self-reported poor financial management skills, which meant they struggled to deploy the proceeds effectively even when they could access funds.
Stakeholders, including donors, policymakers, and practitioners, can drive meaningful impact by designing programs that meet the ecosystem’s needs. They can address these needs of women to significantly enhance their business potential—whether through improved access to finance, mentorship, or tailored policies. If stakeholders focus on creating programs and systems that fill such gaps, they would unlock substantial positive outcomes and create a pathway to achieve lasting, scalable impact and promote inclusive development.
As a result, these programs can empower more women-led businesses to expand their ventures, generate economic growth in local communities, and contribute to the broader national economy. Through such tailored support, Bangladesh’s women entrepreneurs can give flight to their dreams and, in the process, enrich their families, communities, and the nation.
Transforming Bihar through aquaculture
India’s aquaculture and fisheries sector is emerging as a “sunrise sector,” thanks to the growing domestic and international demand for fish. The sector employs more than 28 million people directly and indirectly and contributes 1.1 percent to the economy. It has a massive potential to generate livelihoods and boost rural incomes.
Bihar has abundant water resources and a long tradition of fish consumption, which makes it suitable for aquaculture. As a result of the State’s efforts, in just four years, Bihar’s fish production grew by more than 40 percent, rising from 0.60 million tonnes in 2018-19 to 0.85 million tonnes in 2022-23. The increased production could meet the State’s domestic demand for fish, which has made the State nearly “self-sufficient” and reduced the supply from other States. But even success has challenges, and Bihar faces a big shortage of quality fish seeds. Despite being India’s fourth largest inland fish producer, it produces less than 1 percent of the country’s fish seeds and depends heavily on other States for supply. The Government of Bihar’s Department of Animal and Fisheries Resources (DAFR) took initiatives to address this challenge.
The government tackled the low supply of improved fish seeds by creating linkages between local hatcheries, small nurseries, and fisherfolk in Bihar with private hatcheries outside the State and government institutions, such as the National Fisheries Development Board, Bhubaneshwar.
Quality seeds
This linkage enabled the stocking of high-quality seeds for improved fish species, such as Jayanti rohu, improved catla, and amur carp, in government-supported ponds. This ensured a steady supply of high-quality fish seeds for local farmers and led to a 30 percent increase in pond productivity, enabling fisherfolk to earn 25 percent more income. Additionally, it reduced fish mortality by 10 percent and increased growth rates by more than 25 percent compared to conventional varieties reared in Bihar.
This also enhanced food security as more families gained access to nutrient-rich fish. Apart from the import, the government also worked towards boosting the production of high-quality seeth within Bihar to meet the State’s growing demand. It selected local hatcheries to serve as brood stock banks for genetically improved fish species, assessed their facilities, made necessary upgrades, and provided them with fingerlings to develop the stock.
This ensures self-sufficient access to high-quality seeds reduces dependency on other States, and creates economic opportunities for local communities
Moreover, to ensure the ecosystem remains sustainable; the government organises workshops and hands-on
training to teach fisherfolk advanced techniques. This empowers local communities to adopt modern aquaculture
practices and create a resilient fisheries sector.
A delegation of senior DAFR officials undertook an exposure visit to Malaysia and Vietnam to learn about advanced aquaculture practices. This visit allowed the delegation to observe sustainable aquaculture practices in these countries and explore international collaborations to enhance Bihar’s aquaculture productivity and export potential.
This article was first published on January 22, 2025, in The Hindu Business Line.
Strengthening opportunities for women-owned microenterprises in South Africa through partnerships and digital solutions
The many aspects of Financial Inclusion
MicroSave Consulting (MSC) is a boutique consulting firm that has, for 25 years, pushed the world towards meaningful financial, social, and economic inclusion. These podcast series are hosted by MSC for dedicated founders, start-ups, investors, and other stakeholders in the startup ecosystem. Through this bouquet of curated conversations around developments in the financial inclusion space, we offer insights and lessons based on our research and expertise.
Strengthening opportunities for women-owned microenterprises in South Africa through partnerships and digital solutions: Mel Mosime, Director of Pic-A-Biz Consulting
In this podcast, we host Mel Mosime, Director of Pic-A-Biz Consulting. We cover strategies to strengthen the entrepreneurial ecosystem for South Africa’s women-owned microenterprises (WMEs). The conversation dives into initiatives to enhance WMEs’ resilience, partnerships between financial institutions and development partners to de-risk lending and encourage formalization, and the growing trend of WMEs that use digital solutions to save rather than borrow.
Strengthening opportunities for women-owned microenterprises in South Africa through partnerships and digital solutions
The many aspects of Financial Inclusion
MicroSave Consulting (MSC) is a boutique consulting firm that has, for 25 years, pushed the world towards meaningful financial, social, and economic inclusion. These podcast series are hosted by MSC for dedicated founders, start-ups, investors, and other stakeholders in the startup ecosystem. Through this bouquet of curated conversations around developments in the financial inclusion space, we offer insights and lessons based on our research and expertise.
Strengthening opportunities for women-owned microenterprises in South Africa through partnerships and digital solutions: Mpumi Maesela, CEO, Servicios Empresaviales (SE) Holdings
In this podcast, we host Mpumi Maesela, CEO, Servicios Empresaviales (SE) Holdings. We cover strategies to strengthen the entrepreneurial ecosystem for South Africa’s women-owned microenterprises (WMEs). The conversation dives into initiatives to enhance WMEs’ resilience, partnerships between financial institutions and development partners to de-risk lending and encourage formalization, and the growing trend of WMEs that use digital solutions to save rather than borrow.