Empowerment of Women's MSMEs Supports a Better Family Future

JAKARTA - In many areas in Indonesia, women not only play a role as household managers, but also become the driving force of the family economy through the businesses they build.

Starting from grocery stores, home culinary businesses, handicrafts, fashion to agriculture, women-run MSMEs are a source of income and at the same time open up opportunities for people around them.

Despite having a big role, female MSMEs still face the same challenges year after year, namely limited access to business capital.

In fact, additional capital is often the first step so that businesses can grow, increase production capacity, and expand the market.

Therefore, more and more parties are encouraging the presence of more inclusive productive financing for women. One of them is done by Amartha, which has been channeling business capital to more than 4 million rural women MSMEs for more than 16 years.

Until now, the total funding that has been disbursed has reached more than Rp. 47 trillion. Julie Fauzie, Chief Funding Officer of Amartha, said that access to financing is not only helping business actors obtain capital, but also creating a wider social impact.

"When capital is channeled to MSMEs, the impact can be widespread economically. Through productive financing, MSMEs can obtain access to capital to develop their businesses, increase family income, and create jobs," he said.

The impact is beginning to be seen on the ground. In 2025, women's MSMEs supported by Amartha will encourage the creation of around 90,000 new jobs through the recruitment of the first employees by business actors.

Interestingly, as many as 86 percent of the new workforce are women. This figure shows that when a woman gets the opportunity to develop her business, the benefits do not stop at increasing family income.

The growing business also opens up employment opportunities for other women in the surrounding area, so that the effects can be felt by the community more broadly.

Women's empowerment through MSMEs also requires support in the form of financial literacy. Understanding how to manage cash flow, preparing a business plan, to making financial decisions is an important resource so that businesses can survive in the long term.

Certified Financial Planner Lolita Setyawati CFP®, RIFA®, assesses that people are now beginning to understand the importance of healthy financial management before making any financial decisions.

"When you want to start investing, the most important thing is to first know yourself. What is the purpose of the investment, how much tolerance for risk, and what will be done if the results are not as expected," said Lolita.

According to him, the same principle is also relevant in developing a business, namely understanding the financial condition and making decisions in a measured manner, not just following trends. He also reminded the importance of understanding how a financial product is managed.

As public awareness of the social impact of financial activities increases, various initiatives have emerged that connect communities with productive financing for MSMEs.

One of them is through Amartha Prosper which presents the Grassroots Growth Series (GGS), with the distribution of funds to women's MSMEs in various regions.

"Investors not only get the potential for returns, but also the investment that is channeled can have a wider and more inclusive economic impact, especially for women's MSMEs," he concluded.