ABSTRACT
Women’s role in driving growth for businesses and the international economy is increasingly recognized; however, more discussion is required on how companies can empower women along the length of increasingly complex global supply chains and how best to capture the potential benefits of doing so. With a focus on the base of the pyramid (BOP), this chapter outlines incentives and disincentives in the business case for women’s economic empowerment, placing particular emphasis on new opportunities and rarely addressed challenges in conclusively establishing the business case. It then compares two initiatives from the global organization CARE International Bangladesh which were able to successfully quantify the business case for investing in women as producers, employers and consumers and suggests new ways in which companies can empower women and extend the business case to women at the BOP.
