Newsweek: Making Loans Work for Women

November 27, 2010

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, deputy director of the Women and Foreign Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, has spent more than five years writing and reporting on female entrepreneurs in Afghanistan. Her work is now the subject of a forthcoming book, The Dressmaker of Khair Khana. She spoke to NEWSWEEK’s Tania Barnes about how the international community can support female entrepreneurs.

Do you believe in the power of microfinance to lift women out of poverty?
Microfinance is a part of the solution, but it should not be confused with the solution. Because microfinance is so manageable in terms of the size of the loan, people have made it the cornerstone to lifting women out of poverty. They have forgotten the other economic contributions women make, and the challenges women face when trying to create small and medium enterprises.