Regional Economic Development Strategies

India’s Economy Has a Missing Engine: Women Especially women from lower-income backgrounds. A McKinsey study estimated that India could add $770 billion to GDP by 2025 by simply advancing gender parity in work. But instead, female labor force participation fell from 32% (2005) to ~20% (2020). https://lnkd.in/dvys4E6f Despite progress in some areas, female labor force participation in India is among the lowest in the world, even lower than some Sub-Saharan African countries. Why Are So Many Poor Women Underemployed or Not Properly Utilized? 1. Social and Cultural Barriers • Deep-rooted patriarchy restricts women’s mobility, especially in rural or conservative areas. • Girls are often seen as temporary earners, their “real role” is expected to be at home. 2. Safety and Mobility • Public transport is unsafe or unavailable, making it harder for women to travel to work. • Fear of harassment, especially in cities or during night shifts, keeps families from letting women work. 3. Unpaid Labor at Home • Women spend hours daily doing unpaid work: cooking, cleaning, child care, elder care. • This invisible labor is neither recognized nor redistributed. • Poor women, in particular, bear the double burden of poverty and gendered expectation. 4. Lack of Suitable Jobs - There is no structured pathway from informal to formal employment. 5. Policy & Structural Failure • Skill development programs often don’t reach women or are too generic and disconnected from market realities. • No large-scale, nationwide push for rural women entrepreneurship, decentralized production, or employment guarantees for women. • Schemes exist, but access is broken due to middlemen, corruption, or lack of information. Poor women: • Walk miles for water • Raise children with limited resources • Cook without clean fuel • Manage micro-budgets like CFOs of households Yet the system never sees them as ‘employable’ or ‘productive’. What Can Change This? 1. Localized employment: Bring dignified work to villages (e.g., food processing, crafts, decentralised manufacturing). 2. Safe, affordable transport: So women can commute without fear. 3. Women-led cooperatives and micro-enterprises: Let women own their work, not just participate. 4. Recognition of unpaid work: Design policies around time poverty, not just joblessness. 5. Mindset shift: From “allowing” women to work to realizing they hold the key to national growth. We talk of “demographic dividend” but leave half the population on the sidelines. A country that sidelines its women isn’t just unjust, it is chronically underperforming.

After founding and scaling a women's organization to 15,000+ members, I know one truth: 89% of women's networks fail to deliver real value. This one won't. As the founder and former CEO of the National Association of Women Sales Professionals (NAWSP), I built a community that transformed careers, not just conversations. Three critical elements I learned about building powerful women's networks: • Success depends on curation, not collection. The right 20 connections outperform 2,000 random ones every time. • Women leaders need spaces designed for their actual lives, not idealized versions. Your calendar is already full. • Networks that drive results focus on action and visibility, not just talk and theory. This is why I immediately recognized the power of the Wednesday Women Membership that just launched today. It's not another crowded Slack group with performative networking. It's built for exec-level women who lead with conviction, value authentic connection, and want every woman to rise. No Instagram-perfect corporate masks. No status symbol price tags. No time-wasting activities. Instead: ✅ Hand-curated and AI-powered network connections that actually matter ✅ Value that fits into your actual life ✅ A community rooted in action, generosity, authenticity, and visibility I've built and led organizations that changed the trajectory of women's careers for over a decade. The Wednesday Women approach aligns with everything I know works. Power doesn't come from larger networks. It comes from strategic ones. What would change if you stopped collecting connections and started cultivating the right ones? P.S. For women executives tired of networks that take more than they give: This is your community. https://lnkd.in/epHyq42c #WednesdayWomen #ExecutiveWomen

We all know how important insurance is. But how does this market operate and what challenges does it face in the MENA region? This report answers this question quite well by analysing the key obstacles this industry faces in this complex and diverse part of the world. Here are my key takeaways: 🔶 Life insurance penetration in MENA is very low compared to non-life insurance and other regions, pointing to major growth potential. 🔶 Public pension systems have large unfunded liabilities, so expanding private retirement solutions like life insurance is crucial. 🔶 Insurers can help facilitate economic diversification in oil-dependent economies by enabling riskier investments. 🔶 Insurance supports trade growth, like covering emerging supply chain risks as economies move up the value chain. 🔶 Morocco shows how positive conditions like capable supervision, private sector insurers, and removal of restrictions can foster a leading insurance market. 🔶 Mandatory insurance lines are limited in the region, even motor third-party liability isn't universally enforced. 🔶 State-owned insurers dominate some markets, crowding out private sector development. 🔶 Lack of actuarial and technical skills hinders insurance sector development in many MENA markets. The MENA insurance market may have its quirks, but its potential is no mirage #insurance #MENA #financialinclusion #economics #growthpotential

Women get just 2% of VC funding. Yet they built $2 trillion in social enterprise revenue. As someone building a mission-first business, I kept wondering: How are these women pulling it off without investor backing? So, I studied the data and found something remarkable. Women-led startups might struggle for traditional funding. But they're dominating the impact space in ways that would shock most investors. 50% of social enterprises worldwide are women-led,. Compared to only 20% of conventional businesses. These businesses support 200 million jobs globally. Here are the 5 hard-earned lessons they'd share: 1. Focus on community-driven revenue over investor validation. Women-led impact businesses excel at building sustainable revenue through their communities first. Take Frontier Markets in India. They created a network of 40,000 rural women entrepreneurs who drive sales directly. This approach: - Generates consistent cash flow - Creates measurable social impact - Makes external funding optional rather than essential 2. Design for resilience from day one. → Build multiple revenue streams early → Establish strong community partnerships → Create products that solve urgent problems → Develop systems that can scale without massive capital injections 3. Leverage your mission as your competitive advantage. Women-led social enterprises understand something traditional businesses miss: Purpose drives performance. When your mission solves real problems: → Employees become passionate contributors → Customers become advocates → Partnerships form naturally This reduces customer acquisition costs and creates sustainable growth momentum. 4. Bootstrap with strategic partnerships instead of chasing investors. Smart women entrepreneurs partner with established organizations, government programs, and community leaders to access resources without giving up equity. They leverage existing infrastructure, share risks, and create win-win scenarios that benefit all stakeholders while maintaining control of their vision. 5. Build proof through impact metrics that investors can't ignore. Women-led impact businesses excel at measuring and communicating their value creation. → Create compelling stories → They track both financial and social ROI → And eventually attract the right kind of funding when they're ready to scale further. — The funding gap is real and problematic. But women are proving that impact businesses can thrive by prioritizing community, mission, and sustainable growth over traditional investor validation. What strategies have worked for your impact business?

Only 26.3% of women in Nepal are in the labor force. Most are engaged in unpaid or informal work. In contrast, 60.5% of women in China are working, many in formal jobs or running their businesses. This isn’t just a policy issue. It’s about how opportunities are created, how networks function, and how work is structured. Growing up, we’ve all seen how women’s work is often undervalued. A mother running a household is rarely seen as a manager, yet she handles finances, logistics, and crisis management daily. A woman running a small shop is seen as someone "helping out" rather than an entrepreneur. The problem isn’t a lack of capability, it’s a lack of recognition and access. This is where we need to think, where are the jobs for women? In Nepal, well-paying, high-skill roles are still dominated by men. And when it comes to starting a business, most women hesitate not because they lack ideas, but because the risks seem too high. No funding, no networks, and no safety net. So, should we wait for change or create new ways for women to participate in the economy? But, what can be done? 1/ Workplaces that work for women – More flexible jobs, more remote opportunities, and business models designed around real-life responsibilities. 2/ Lowering the barriers to entrepreneurship—Starting small shouldn’t be a struggle. Micro-franchises, local cooperatives, and digital businesses can help women take on risks without huge risks. 3/ More investment in women-led businesses – Not just money, but mentorship, training, and support to turn ideas into sustainable businesses. Women in Nepal don’t need permission to work, they need real opportunities that fit their realities. If the system isn’t designed for them, maybe it’s time to build a new one. What practical ways can we bring more women into the workforce today?   #Entrepreneurship #EconomicEmpowerment #WomenEntrepreneurship #Nepal 

Just after International Women's Day, the March Research Insights from The World Bank's World Bank Development Economics focus on more and better jobs for women. They highlight four recent research papers: 👩🏫 Megan Lang and Julia Seither find that a skills-based program in rural Uganda, which focused on business planning, record-keeping, and soft skills, increased women's likelihood of generating income from their own businesses by 17% after 18 months, helping them reinvest in their enterprises and maintain stable revenues during the COVID-19 lockdown. 💡 These findings highlight skills-based programs as an effective strategy for enhancing women’s economic participation and ability to withstand financial shocks. https://lnkd.in/g3Gyixmd 👷♀️ Florencia Devoto, Emanuela Galasso, Kathleen Beegle, and Dr. Stefanie Brodmann show that a public works program in urban Djibouti, designed to facilitate women's access to employment through job proximity, high wages, and flexible work arrangements, achieved a 77% take-up rate among eligible women but did not lead to sustained employment after the program ended. 📌 This underscores the need for policies that extend beyond short-term employment by expanding access to sustained job opportunities, addressing structural labor market constraints, and creating an enabling environment for women’s workforce participation. https://lnkd.in/gCXRNizF 🏠 Ivette Contreras, Lelys Dinarte, Amparo Palacios Lopez, Valentina Costa, and Steffanny Romero Esteban find that a survey experiment in El Salvador found that including a module with a list of activities in household surveys increased reported employment for women by 8.1 percentage points, as it helped them identify informal activities like preparing food or helping in a family-owned business as work, which are often underestimated in standard surveys. 📍 In low- and middle-income countries, where informal work is prevalent and employment gaps between women and men are significant, refining labor data collection is essential to designing and targeting interventions that help women and youth access better job opportunities.  https://lnkd.in/gtxJEDET 🕌 Federico Fiuratti, Steven Pennings, and Jesica Torres estimate that gender employment gaps in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) could significantly boost GDP per capita, with long-term gains averaging 50% across the region, though these gains vary widely by country and are expected to be smaller in the medium term due to slow physical capital adjustment. 🧷 This underscores the importance of reforms to facilitate female employment to accelerate economic growth in MENA, particularly in countries with the largest gender gaps. https://lnkd.in/gA5wYYER The Research Insights are available here: https://lnkd.in/geXYnXEZ

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗶𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝗯𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗦𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗼𝗻 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝘆—𝗶𝘁’𝘀 𝗯𝗿𝗲𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻 𝗟𝗔𝗧𝗔𝗠. Why? ✅ Mobile-first user base ✅ Underserved by legacy carriers ✅ Greenfield opportunity for digital-native infrastructure ✅ Regulatory shifts creating tailwinds for innovation ✅ Markets can easily tailor their offerings to their dominant demographic of under 30s Meet Crabi and Olé Life—two game-changers redefining insurance in LATAM. 🚗 Crabi is Mexico’s first full-stack digital car insurer, built from the ground up. With AI at its core, it delivers a seamless embedded insurance experience—fully digital, frictionless, and built for scale. 💡 Olé Life is breaking new ground as a full-stack life insurance carrier using AI-powered digital underwriting. Its mission? Supercharge brokers and agents with a tech-first platform that makes selling life insurance faster, easier, and smarter. Both are firsts in the region—and they’re setting a new standard for what insurance should look like in the age of AI. In LatAm, AI isn’t replacing legacy systems—it’s leapfrogging them as incumbents lack digital sophistication. If you’re building in risk & insurance, don’t sleep on LatAm. It’s not just a growth market. It’s a proving ground for what’s next. 🔗 Check out my blog post on emerging markets—link in the comments! Who's building in this space? Drop a 👋 below.

Community advocacy takes on a unique energy when young feminists come together in informal settlements like Mukuru. It’s in spaces like these where the intersection of daily struggles and grassroots activism truly highlights the resilience and creativity of young women. Organizing in these contexts isn’t just about fighting for rights—it’s about understanding the lived realities of those we advocate for, and allowing that understanding to shape our strategies and actions. In Mukuru, the challenges are stark—access to resources, navigating systemic barriers, and addressing immediate community needs. But it’s also here that the strength of collective action shines. Young feminists are not just organizing; they are reimagining what it means to lead, to build, and to advocate from the ground up. The lessons learned are invaluable: the importance of listening before leading, of building trust within the community, and of pushing for change that’s as nuanced and multifaceted as the people it’s meant to serve. This experience reinforces the power of intersectional advocacy—where understanding the complexities of informal settlements and integrating that into our feminist organizing isn’t just beneficial, it’s essential. It’s a reminder that true advocacy is rooted in the communities we serve, and that the most impactful change often starts with the most overlooked voices.

𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗥𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆 𝗪𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗗𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗚𝗹𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗹 𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗦𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 The automotive industry is global, but insurance is intensely local. This fundamental tension is reshaping how successful companies approach international expansion - and the stakes have never been higher. After analyzing automotive insurance markets across Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America, we've identified a critical pattern: companies that succeed globally don't standardize their insurance offerings - they master localization while maintaining platform consistency. The 𝚍̲𝚊̲𝚝̲𝚊̲ tells a compelling story: • Europe leads with sophisticated regulatory frameworks and 25% electric vehicle adoption, driving $7.32 billion in extended warranty value.  • Asia-Pacific shows explosive growth with telematics adoption rates twice that of Europe and North America.  • Latin America presents massive untapped potential—Brazil's used car market is three times larger than new, yet automotive warranties represent only 5% of the $600 million warranty sector. But here's what most global strategies miss: These aren't just different markets - they're different evolutionary stages of the same transformation. The 𝚜̲𝚝̲𝚛̲𝚊̲𝚝̲𝚎̲𝚐̲𝚒̲𝚌̲ ̲𝚏̲𝚛̲𝚊̲𝚖̲𝚎̲𝚠̲𝚘̲𝚛̲𝚔̲ that works: • Europe: Demands compliance excellence and innovation within strict regulatory frameworks. Success requires deep partnerships with established players. • Asia-Pacific: Rewards speed and scale. With 70 million telematics subscriptions projected by 2030, winners build platforms handling massive volume while maintaining local customization. • Latin America: Requires investment in consumer education and trust-building. The payoff is enormous for companies making long-term commitments. Three critical 𝚜̲𝚞̲𝚌̲𝚌̲𝚎̲𝚜̲𝚜̲ ̲𝚏̲𝚊̲𝚌̲𝚝̲𝚘̲𝚛̲𝚜̲: • Regulatory arbitrage: Use regulatory differences as competitive advantages. What's required in Europe becomes a differentiator in Asia. • Data sovereignty: Build compliance into platform architecture rather than treating it as an overlay. • Partnership strategies: Leverage local expertise while maintaining global standards. The 𝚋̲𝚘̲𝚝̲𝚝̲𝚘̲𝚖̲ ̲𝚕̲𝚒̲𝚗̲𝚎̲: Build global platforms that enable local innovation, not adapted global products. Are you building regional capabilities that create global advantages?** 📊 Global strategy framework: https://lnkd.in/dP6vt5CF #AutomotiveInsurance #Aftersales #MarketGrowth #Innovation #EmbeddedInsurance Phil Hobson Wayne Rees Bahareh Green Millie Lomas Alessandro Filon Luciana Chiappa Marsh Stefano Cicciarella