Saturday 16 February 2013

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon: Women entrepreneurs, example not exception

If you're talking about entrepreneurs in conflict and post-conflict settings, then you must talk about women, because they are the population you have left.” - Gayle Tzemach Lemmon



Reporter Gayle Tzemach Lemmon writes about women entrepreneurs around the world.

Women aren’t micro--so why do they only get micro-loans? Reporter Gayle Tzemach Lemmon argues that women running all types of firms-- from home businesses to major factories-- are the overlooked key to economic development.(Filmed at TEDxWomen.)

Why you should listen to her:

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon never set out to write about women entrepreneurs. She was simply looking for a great—and underreported—economics story after leaving ABC News for MBA study at Harvard to pursue her interest in economic development.

What she found was women entrepreneurs in some of the toughest business environments creating jobs against daunting obstacles. Since then her writing on entrepreneurship has appeared in publications including the International Herald Tribune and Financial Times along with the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation.
While working in finance at the global investment firm PIMCO, Lemmon went on to write a book about a young Afghan teacher-turned-entrepreneur whose dressmaking business supported women around her neighborhood under the Taliban. The Dressmaker of Khair Khana became a New York Times bestseller and the subject of a Harvard Business School case study.
Now a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing editor-at-large for Newsweek Daily Beast, Lemmon continues to travel the world reporting on economic and development issues with a focus on women. She is author of the Newsweek March 2011 cover story “The Hillary Doctrine” and the September 2011 profile on U.N. Women’s Michelle Bachelet.

Quotes by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Microfinance is an incredibly powerful tool … but we must move beyond micro-hopes and micro-ambitions for women.

Not one country in all the world has eliminated its economic participation [gender] gap — not one.

The women in this room and all around the world are not exceptions. We are not a special interest group. We are the majority.

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