UN Women: Economist and/or Women’s Economic Empowerment Research Expert – for Systematic Literature Review on Women’s Entrepreneurship, Home-based, Retainer International Consultant

Background:

UN Women – the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women – exists to advance women’s rights, gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. 

As the lead United Nations entity on gender equality and secretariat of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, we shift laws, institutions, social norms and services to close the gender gap and build an equal world for all women and girls. Our partnerships with governments, women’s movements and the private sector, coupled with our coordination of the broader United Nations, deliver lasting changes. We make strides in four areas: leadership, economic empowerment, freedom from violence, and peace, security and humanitarian action.

UN Women keeps the rights of women and girls at the centre of global progress – always, everywhere. Because gender equality is not just what we do. It is who we are.

Women’s Economic Empowerment is a key focus area for UN Women as expressed in its Strategic Plan. Empowering women to participate fully in economic life is essential to building strong economies, establishing just societies, and achieving the 2030 Agenda including Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5.

In this context, UN Women places particular emphasis on gender-responsive SME development, inclusive market systems, and strengthening the enabling ecosystem for women entrepreneurs and inclusive enterprises to access finance, markets, infrastructure and policy support. Women entrepreneurs, especially ‘Impact Entrepreneurs’ play a crucial role in driving innovation to address persisting challenges to advance sustainable development. However, women entrepreneurs are often seen as beneficiaries rather than driver of such innovation. 

 

THE ISSUE 

Women-owned businesses are widely recognized as drivers of inclusive economic growth, yet significant gaps persist in understanding the “Missing Middle” segment, that is firms that have outgrown microenterprise support but remain underserved by formal finance, markets, and business ecosystems. Existing literature highlights intersecting structural and gender-based constraints, including limited access to finance, markets, networks, and persistent gender gaps in unpaid care workloads. However, evidence remains fragmented, particularly regarding the distinctiveness of the Missing Middle segment, the interaction between structural and gender constraints, the pathways linking enterprise support to growth, jobs, and women’s economic empowerment. 

Furthermore, despite growing recognition of the economic multiplier effects of investing in care and climate-responsive sectors, there remains limited consolidated and policy-relevant evidence that systematically links gender-diverse entrepreneurship in the care and green economies with women’s labour force participation, job quality, enterprise growth, and ecosystem-level transformation. 

Women entrepreneurs can often be segmented into ‘Necessity entrepreneurs’ vs ‘Opportunity Entrepreneurs’. This is irrespective of the sector they are operating in. In addition to care and green sectors, the tourism sector contributes a high share to the GDP of economies in Asia and the Pacific. This sector is highly feminized, yet women entrepreneurs are often segregated at the nano, micro segment and remain ‘necessity entrepreneurs’.

 

Approaches to addressing these challenges

There is growing recognition of the role of inclusive and impact businesses, especially those in the ‘Missing Middle in advancing women’s economic empowerment, there remains limited consolidated evidence on the specific pathways through which such enterprises contribute to increasing women’s labour force participation, improving job quality, and catalyzing systemic shifts in the care and green economies as well as regional economic priority sectors , such as Tourism. In particular, there is a need to better understand how inclusive entrepreneurship intersects with care systems transformation, climate resilience, decent work creation, and inclusive SME ecosystem development across emerging markets. Strengthening the enabling ecosystem -including access to finance, market linkages, policy coherence, standards, infrastructure and investment readiness- is therefore critical to unlocking the growth potential of gender-diverse enterprises in these sectors.

While practice-based evidence and programme learnings are emerging, there remains limited consolidated and policy-relevant analysis that systematically links gender-diverse entrepreneurship in the care and green economies with women’s labour force participation, job quality outcomes, enterprise growth trajectories, and ecosystem-level enablers and constraints. Existing research often examines care systems, climate entrepreneurship, or women’s MSME participation in isolation. There is a critical g