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FOCUS TOPIC Women in Development — Working for a Fairer World
“Countries cannot move forward if half of their citizens are held back,” says the World Bank. Yet, despite having dedicated objectives under both the Millennium Development Goals (2000–2015) and the Sustainable Development Goals (2015– 2030), the real-world achievement of gender equality still remains a long way off. The share of women and girls living in extreme poverty has dropped below 10 percent, and women now hold roughly one in four parliamentary seats globally (27.2 percent) — but at current rates it will take more than 130 years to lift all women and girls out of poverty, while parity in parliaments is unlikely before the 2060s. Gender equality is not a straight line but a long journey across cultures and centuries. When norms shift, societies prosper — yet progress can stall or even go in reverse. The practical lesson for development is clear: legal reforms, resources and representation must move together. Insti tutions can accelerate this shift by hard-wiring inclusion into how programs are designed, financed and delivered. Evidence from research to practice points in the same direction: if women have access to education, health, asset ownership, finance and decent work, then household welfare rises, firms grow and communities become more resilient. The OPEC Fund has translated this understanding into practice across its portfolio. Between mid- 2024 and mid-2025, OPEC Fund-supported
projects empowered 250,000 women through access to essential services, economic partici pation and skills development. This builds on results from the preceding year, when projects reaching early operational maturity empowered nearly 35,000 women across multiple regions and sectors. Microfinance has been a particularly powerful vehicle. Building on early breakthroughs popu larized by economist and Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, the OPEC Fund invested US$40 million in the Microfinance Enhance ment Facility, a platform launched in 2009 in partnership with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Kreditanstalt für Wieder aufbau. Since inception, the facility has invested US$2.7 billion across 63 countries, reaching more than 740,000 end-borrowers — approxi mately 78 percent of them women. By channeling capital through 300 local financial institutions, the facility has demonstrated that getting small and timely capital into women’s hands can fuel outsized gains in livelihoods, schooling and nutrition. Beyond microfinance, the OPEC Fund has supported women’s economic participation through a range of instruments. Credit lines to local banks in Botswana and Kosovo have included dedicated allocations for women- owned businesses, with the aim of expanding women’s share of SME portfolios from 20 to 25 percent. In Central America and East Africa,
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