that are essential to their ability to thrive as economic actors across the lifecycle. This includes, but is not limited to, living lives free of violence and exploitation, achieving the highest possible standard of health and well-being, enjoying full legal and human rights such as access to registration, identification, and citizenship documents, benefitting from formal and informal education, and equal protection of and access to land and property rights, access to fundamental labor rights, policies to address disproportionate care burdens, and business and management skills and leadership opportunities. (5) Discriminatory legal and regulatory systems and banking practices are hurdles to women’s access to capital and assets, including land, machinery, production facilities, technology, and human resources. Often, these barriers are connected to a woman’s marital status, which can determine whether she is able to inherit land or own property in her name. These constraints contribute to women frequently running smaller businesses, with fewer employees and lower asset values. (6) Savings groups primarily comprised of women are recognized as a vital entry point, especially for poor and very poor women, to formal financial services and there is a high demand for such groups to protect and grow their savings with formal financial institutions. Evidence shows that, once linked to a bank, the average savings per member increases between 40 to 100 percent and the average profit per member doubles. Key to these outcomes is investing in financial literacy, business leadership training, and mentorship. (7) United States support for microenterprise and microfinance development programs, which seek to reduce poverty in low-income countries by giving small loans to small-scale entrepreneurs without collateral, have been a useful mechanism to help families weather economic shocks, but many microcredit borrowers largely remain in poverty. The vast majority of microcredit borrowers are women who would like to move up the