This book provides a current and comprehensive analysis of the context in which Pacific women engage in the private sector, as well as a detailed list of strategies to increase their participation in business. Drawing on research and data from seven Pacific countries, it offers a diversity of innovative and pragmatic ways to empower women and enhance their economic opportunities. Jointly undertaken by the Asian Development Bank's Pacific Private Sector Development Initiative and the Government of Australia, this study is valuable for anyone seeking to support Pacific women and contribute to entrepreneurship, business development, and private sector growth.

This publication provides insights on how trade can be leveraged for greater economic empowerment of women in the Pacific. It includes an analysis of how gender mainstreaming in Aid for Trade interventions could catalyze greater donor support to help the region benefit from truly inclusive trade-driven growth. In the Pacific, the labor force participation gap between men and women has narrowed, but women there are still less likely to be in work than men. Women are also more likely to be working in low-paid, low-skilled jobs, or informal, vulnerable employment. To tap into the full potential of the female labor force and entrepreneurial potential, much more needs to be done.

This new edition of Karen Blair’s popular anthology originally published in 1989 includes thirteen essays, eight of which are new. Together they suggest the wide spectrum of women’s experiences that make up a vital part of Northwest history.

Micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) play a significant role in economic development in Pacific island countries and offer pathways to women’s leadership and economic empowerment. This report explores the state of knowledge on women’s economic empowerment in the region, focusing on women’s entrepreneurship and MSMEs owned by women. Drawing on over 200 published papers and studies and 11 quantitative datasets, it analyzes drivers of—and barriers to—women’s economic empowerment. It looks at business ownership, formalization, and expansion; violence against women and girls; and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report provides recommendations for research, policy, and programming.

Despite the negative press Asian economies have received in connection with the recent financial crisis, their record of spectacular growth over the past few decades remains irrefutable. In an effort to provide a rich, textured analysis of these economies, editor W. Mark Fruin presents a collection of essays that explores the wide range of network organizations that have been established in the Pacific Rim. Conventional studies of economic organization have tended to center on markets and hierarchies, the two forms of organization most common in the West. But today the world moves too quickly and too unpredictably for the idealized organizations of microeconomic theory to keep up. It is no accident that the region that has generated the world's most explosive economic growth is also the region where network organizations--sets of independent actors who cooperate frequently for mutual advantage--are most pervasive. Rapid economic, social, and technical changes favor the formation of network organizations, and vice versa. The contributors to this volume identify and elucidate four basic types of networks: naturally occurring networks, market replacing networks, hierarchy replacing networks, and market enhancing networks. They show how all of these have been shaped by the history, government, legal system, and culture of each country under consideration. These network organizations allow the authors to compare and contrast network forms in China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States according to features such as degrees of formalization, rule definition, and market conformance. The works collected here make an important contribution to a networks-markets- hierarchies framework that recognizes and emphasizes the diversity of organizational forms and behaviors. A unique resource for scholars and professionals in the fields of management and economics, this book enables a complex analysis of one of the world's fastest growing and most theoretically challenging regions.