About Women's World Banking

Women's World Banking is the only microfinance network with an explicit focus on women. Our network of 39 financial organizations from 28 countries—also known as microfinance institutions—located around the world provide small loans, sometimes as modest as $100, to people to start their businesses. Women's World Banking is focused on ensuring women have access to these microloans. Customers use these loans in different ways: some purchase a cycle to transport vegetables to a market, or use the money to buy raw materials; others buy fertilizer for their crops, or a sewing machine to start a tailoring business. However, they all have one goal: to make a decent living and support their families' basic needs. Many are able to send their kids to school for the first time, eat three square meals a day or make seemingly small home improvements that can actually have a significant effect on the household such as move from a mud floor home to a cement floor.

Microfinance is about more than credit and has the capacity to help more than entrepreneurs. WWB helps microfinance institutions move away from a strictly credit-led approach toward providing a broader array of financial products and services, including savings and insurance to help the poor build comprehensive financial safety nets.

WWB, headquartered in New York, serves as an umbrella organization to the 39 local microfinance organizations. We advocate for the benefits of microfinance and for the need to serve women, conduct research and share best practices. But most importantly, we develop vital financial products to enable microfinance organizations to better serve their clients and achieve their mission to bring people out of poverty.

Download the WWB factsheet

Our Mission

The mission of the Women's World Banking global network is to expand the economic assets, participation and power of low-income women and their households by helping them access financial services, knowledge and markets.

Our Vision

One day all women will be able to build a secure financial future for themselves and their households.

Women's World Banking: Leaders and Clients in Focus

Why Women and Microfinance

The initial motivation for microfinance roughly 30 years ago was, to a great extent, gender neutral. The pioneering microfinance institutions sought to provide credit to poor entrepreneurs who had no assets to pledge as collateral and, consequently, were denied access to capital by the formal banking sector. It quickly emerged, however, that women entrepreneurs invested the profits from their businesses in ways that would have a longer-lasting, more profound impact on the lives of their families and communities. The woman entrepreneur as the gateway to household stability became a fundamental premise of the microfinance business model and the success of microfinance as a poverty alleviation tool.