There is an INR 1.37 trillion (USD 16.67 billion) unmet finance need for women-owned Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (wMSMEs) in India, as per a recent study by the International Finance Corporation.

There is a need for data and research, including gender disaggregated data at the state and national-levels, on cooperatives across different sectors to make visible the contributions of women’s cooperatives to the cooperative movement and to the economy, including to the nation’s GDP.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an adverse impact on informal women workers and their cooperatives.Cooperatives in the informal sector, particularly those owned by women,were hardest hit as they have precariously low resources to absorbs hocks of this magnitude.