Women mean business.

• Author: Eberwine, Donna
• Position: Latin American businesswomen

No one knows exactly how many women microentrepreneurs there are in Latin America and the Caribbean. What is clear is that the number of women who work as self-employed microproducers, vendors, or service providers has increased dramatically in the past fifteen years. More and better education for women, along with better birth control and smaller families, has spurred more and more women to enter the labor force voluntarily over the past three decades.

But for many women microentrepreneurs, their work is a matter of necessity. One of the chief results of what economists have termed the "lost decade" of the 1980s was growth in unemployment for men and women alike. Many women who lost jobs in the formal sector turned to self-employment in order to continue to make a living. Others were forced to become breadwinners for the first time as their male partners left home to seek work in other cities or even abroad. Today, from one third to one half of all microentrepreneurs in Latin America are believed to be women; in urban areas, estimates run from over half up to 70-80 percent.

The success of these women is critical both for their families and for their countries' economies as a whole. Their earnings buy essential food and clothing for their families, making them frontline fighters in the battle against poverty. At the same time, the goods they produce and the services they provide make up a significant portion of the region's gross domestic product.

"What women microentrepreneurs need is not charity," says Cristina Solari Ortiz, chief of the Inter-American Development Bank's (IDB) Microenterprise Division. "They need access to credit on fair-market terms, and advice on managing their businesses and marketing their products." Ortiz's staff is working with organizations throughout the region to provide women microentrepreneurs with loans and business training. IDB-financed credit programs, most carried out by nongovernmental organizations, have helped nearly one hundred thousand women to start, expand, or consolidate micro-or small-scale businesses.

Maria de los Angeles Retana Gentillini, a forty-five-year-old Costa Rican homemaker and mother of five, started making and selling homemade candies when her husband, Manuel, left for the United States to work. "I was here by myself and trying to figure out something I could do to earn money," she says. Retana was bringing in a small income as a street vendor but that kept her away from her children...