Before the end of the decade, the institution will seek to give 300 million more women access to cell phones and the internet; that 250 million more have access to social protection and that the number of companies created by women increases by 80 million.
The announcement comes on the fourth day of annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington.
Women “do an important part of the informal work” in the world, highlighted the bank’s president, Ajay Banga, during a seminar on the subject. “If we can constructively convert that informal work into managerial work and ‘real’ (formal) work, we can open up important opportunities and huge potential for the future.”
The bank hopes to prioritize investments that take gender equality into account.
In addition, it will seek to cooperate with regulators, financial entities, incubators and private investment funds to give women greater access to financing when they want to create companies.