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 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.

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.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and The Asia Foundation prepared this report as a guide to support women's entrepreneurship in Asia and the Pacific. The three parts of the report cover the key barriers that women in Asia and the Pacific face when trying to establish or grow a business, case studies of projects supported by ADB and The Asia Foundation throughout the region, and proposed areas for further research. The recommendations are aimed at creating an enabling environment for women entrepreneurs and strategies for addressing gaps and leveraging opportunities.

The East Asia and Pacific region has made great progress, relative to other regions, with regard to both economic development and, specifically, economic opportunities for women. However, aspiring female entrepreneurs continue to face unequal barriers to starting, operating, and growing their businesses. Not only does this hurt business women in the region, but it also ultimately hurts poverty reduction and economic growth. 'Economic Opportunities for Women in the East Asia and the Pacific Region' brings together data and available evidence on the constraints that female entrepreneurs in the region face with regard to: access to assets, business regulations and governance issues, and available avenues for expanding businesses and trading with larger markets. The authors present recommendations at the end of each chapter. This book will be of interest to policy makers, donors, nongovernmental organizations, and researchers looking to further examine the constraints that are holding back female entrepreneurs in East Asia and the Pacific.

Since its inception in 1928, the Pan-Pacific Women’s Association (PPWA) has witnessed and contributed to enormous changes in world and Pacific history. Operating out of Honolulu, this women’s network established a series of conferences that promoted social reform and an internationalist outlook through cultural exchange. For the many women attracted to the project—from China, Japan, the Pacific Islands, and the major settler colonies of the region—the association’s vision was enormously attractive, despite the fact that as individuals and national representatives they remained deeply divided by colonial histories. Glamour in the Pacific tells this multifaceted story by bringing together critical scholarship from across a wide range of fields, including cultural history, international relations and globalization, gender and empire, postcolonial studies, population and world health studies, world history, and transnational history. Early chapters consider the first PPWA conferences and the decolonizing process undergone by the association. Following World War II, a new generation of nonwhite women from decolonized and settler colonial nations began to claim leadership roles in the Association, challenging the often Eurocentric assumptions of women’s internationalism. In 1955 the first African American delegate brought to the fore questions about the relationship of U.S. race relations with the Pan-Pacific cultural internationalist project. The effects of cold war geopolitics on the ideal of international cooperation in the era of decolonization were also considered. The work concludes with a discussion of the revival of "East meets West" as a basis for world cooperation endorsed by the United Nations in 1958 and the overall contributions of the PPWA to world culture politics. The internationalist vision of the early twentieth century imagined a world in which race and empire had been relegated to the past. Significant numbers of women from around the Pacific brought this shared vision—together with their concerns for peace, social progress and cooperation—to the lively, even glamorous, political experiment of the Pan-Pacific Women’s Association. Fiona Paisley tells the stories of this extraordinary group of women and illuminates the challenges and rewards of their politics of antiracism—one that still resonates today.

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.