Implications for the Field
What the #SheFUND case suggests for the European Microfinance Network and for gender responsive program design more broadly.
8.1 For the European Microfinance Network
The #SheFUND case demonstrates clearly that the impact of financial inclusion programs for migrant women entrepreneurs cannot be adequately captured by loan disbursement rates, repayment performance, or business survival statistics alone. The most significant effects in this study are in the domains of skills development, confidence, entrepreneurial identity, and social connection. These are outcomes that standard microfinance evaluation frameworks do not capture systematically, and therefore cannot count, cannot report, and cannot use to make the case for sustained investment.
EMN is well positioned to use this evidence to advocate for holistic impact measurement frameworks across its membership, particularly for programs targeting structurally excluded populations for whom the barriers to entrepreneurial success are as much psychological and social as they are financial. This advocacy is not merely principled. It is strategic: organisations that can demonstrate the full range of their impact, not only the subset that current frameworks can measure, will attract more sustained and diverse funding.
EMN should also consider actively promoting the #SheDIDIT model as a replicable non financial services innovation within the European microfinance landscape. Key replicable elements include the coaching as prerequisite structure; the empowerment framing that begins with potential rather than disadvantage; the deliberate composition of a women focused and entrepreneurially literate evaluation jury; and the community building infrastructure that runs through every element of the program.
A longitudinal follow up study at 18 to 24 months post #SheFUND participation, tracking both funded and not funded cohorts, would answer the questions this study cannot. Does the capability gained through coaching persist? Does the business survive and grow? Does the legitimacy signal from a #SheFUND selection translate into long term institutional access? This study provides the baseline. A follow up would provide the trajectory.
8.2 Design Principles for Gender Responsive Financial Inclusion
For organisations designing financial support programs for migrant women entrepreneurs, the #SheFUND case suggests five principles grounded in the evidence and generalisable beyond the Belgian context.
Begin with potential, not disadvantage.
Framing matters. Programs that start from strength and ambition produce different participant experiences and outcomes than those framed around vulnerability and exclusion. #SheDIDIT's explicit commitment to treating migration background as a form of capital rather than a deficit shapes every interaction participants have with the program.
The process is the product.
The selection and feedback process is itself an empowerment intervention. Invest in its quality as seriously as in the financial product. A poorly designed or inconsistently executed selection process does not merely fail to empower. It may actively disempower.
Audience composition matters.
The experience of pitching to a women focused, entrepreneurially literate jury is qualitatively and demonstrably different from pitching to a mixed or male dominated panel. Program design should be deliberate about who evaluates and what relational context the evaluation creates.
Non financial services and financial access are not alternatives.
The evidence shows that coaching and community produce capability and identity effects that financial access alone cannot generate. The two should be designed together, not offered as separate tracks.
Community is infrastructure.
The sense of belonging to a space that understands one's intersectional experience is not a supplementary benefit. It is the mechanism through which other program effects become possible. Build it deliberately, fund it adequately, and measure it systematically.
