By Nik Kamarun and Luis Trevino
Imagine a sector that drives employment and innovation, but remains largely invisible to the broader financial system. This is the reality for millions of women-led micro, small and medium enterprises (W-MSMEs).
W-MSMEs represent an estimated 38 percent of MSMEs globally and contribute significantly to economic growth. Yet the global credit gap for women entrepreneurs stands at a staggering USD 1.7 trillion. Closing it will require the right data to understand and quantify the challenges W-MSMEs face.
For financial regulators and policymakers, the challenge has long been how to measure this sector effectively. Its invisibility directly undermines supervision, policy targeting, and impact measurement. So how do we move from estimating gaps to closing them?
How can we make the invisible visible?
To address this challenge, AFI recently launched the Gender-Responsive Toolkit for MSME Data Ecosystems. Developed with the expertise of AFI’s SME Finance (SMEFWG) and Financial Inclusion Data and Impact (FIDIWG) Working Groups, it will translate global gender commitments into nationally owned, supervisory-ready data systems. It’s an operational roadmap, building on AFI’s Policy Framework on MSME Data Collection and Policy Model on Gender Inclusive Finance.
Data is often treated as a purely technical or IT issue, whereas an effective data ecosystem depends on much more. We have identified four essential building blocks which regulators can use to create sustainable, gender-responsive systems:
- Institutional Foundations: defining clear mandates and coordination bodies, so everyone knows who is responsible.
- Legal & Policy Enablers: crafting the regulations and incentives that make gender-disaggregated reporting standard practice.
- Infrastructure & Platforms: building unified hubs and interoperable IDs that allow systems to talk to each other.
- Data Use & Impact Pathways: ensuring data doesn’t just sit in a database, but actively feeds into policy design and product innovation.
A key feature of the Toolkit is the Data Development Indicator (DDI), a diagnostic tool that functions as a health check for MSME data systems at both institutional and jurisdictional levels.
We piloted the DDI with 54 member institutions and found that 91% are still at an “early stage” of development. The tool allows regulators to identify their institutions’ gaps by assessing four dimensions:
- Data Collection: are you capturing sex-disaggregated microdata?
- Gender Responsiveness: are gender considerations integrated into your definitions and indicators?
- Data Usage: is the data driving policy decisions?
- Governance: do you have the mandates and coordination to sustain quality?
These principles are already being applied in practice – around the world, we see innovative approaches to strengthening gender-responsive MSME data:
- Morocco: the SME Observatory use AI and machine learning to retroactively “tag” gender in legacy portfolios, turning existing data into new insights without costly surveys.
- Rwanda: a Gender Inclusive Finance Roadmap connects demand-side survey data with supply-side regulatory action.
- India: the Udyam Portal integrates gender fields into digital business registration, creating a real-time view of women entrepreneurs for policymakers and lenders.
We now have the tools to close the data gap
Robust, gender-responsive data ecosystems are now within our reach. We invite you to download the Gender-Responsive Toolkit for MSME Data Ecoystems, apply the DDI diagnostic, review the suggested indicators, and identify at least one pilot data project within your jurisdiction. It’s time to move from discussing the gender gap to capturing the data that can close it.