Redefining Resilience and the Case for Women’s Empowerment
by Amanda Satterly
Principal Social Development Specialist (Gender and Development), Asian Development Bank
Resilient economies and societies necessarily require women’s full and unhindered contribution as leaders, innovators, and investors. At this year’s 2X Global Summit, co-hosted by Asian Development Bank (ADB), we are coming together to accelerate collaboration and drive meaningful action to scale women’s contributions to future-ready, crisis-resilient economies.
Through the 2X Global Summit 2025, we are collectively confronting a persistent challenge: despite decades of progress, women remain significantly underrepresented in decision-making spaces, in the capital flows that drive innovation and infrastructure, and in the systems that shape how we anticipate and respond to the crises defining our era. This exclusion is not only unjust—it undermines efficiency, innovation, and resilience.
Rethinking Resilience
Resilience is more than the ability to bounce back. It's the capacity to anticipate, adapt, transform, and thrive in the face of adversity. Women bring unique perspectives and lived experiences that are essential to this process. Whether leading inclusive innovation, investing capital, or driving community recovery efforts, women are already building resilience from the ground up. The problem is, we’re too often excluded when it matters the most.
Crises affect men and women in different ways, yet investments often fail to account for these gendered impacts or to leverage women’s critical roles in recovery and resilience. Planning may ignore the informal economies where women play critical roles. Innovation may fall short by not addressing half the population’s needs. Ensuring women’s economic empowerment isn’t just a moral imperative—it’s a strategic one that increases the return on capital and strengthens outcomes for all.
ADB Mobilising Capital for Inclusive Growth
“In 2024, ADB committed $24.3 billion in total financing, with private sector operations expanding to a record 58 projects—underscoring the growing momentum behind market-based solutions for development.
A landmark achievement was the launch of ADB’s new capital adequacy framework, unlocking $100 billion in additional lending capacity over the next decade and significantly strengthening its ability to mobilise capital at scale.”
To effectively respond to these differentiated impacts and unlock the full potential of inclusive growth, development finance must be intentionally designed to reach and empower women. In 2024, ADB committed $24.3 billion in total financing, with private sector operations expanding to a record 58 projects—underscoring the growing momentum behind market-based solutions for development. A landmark achievement was the launch of ADB’s new capital adequacy framework, unlocking $100 billion in additional lending capacity over the next decade and significantly strengthening its ability to mobilise capital at scale. Looking ahead, ADB’s private sector operations aim to quadruple private investment financing to $13 billion annually by 2030, reinforcing its role as a key enabler of inclusive and resilient growth across the region.
Advancing Gender Lens Investing
As part of the Midterm Review of Strategy 2030, ADB reaffirmed its commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment, highlighting it as a central priority within the resilience and empowerment strategic focus area. Through its support for gender lens investing, ADB mobilises private capital toward women-led and women-benefiting businesses—helping close the global $1.4 to $1.7 trillion credit gap and strengthen economic resilience.
In 2024, this commitment was clearly reflected through 100% of private sector projects integrating targeted actions to directly close gender gaps and advance women’s empowerment—demonstrating a deliberate and systematic approach to embedding gender equality across ADB’s private sector operations.
These efforts are yielding tangible results: 42.3 million female-owned small businesses are currently supported through ADB’s active private sector portfolio. In addition, the Women’s Finance Exchange has partnered with 54 financial institutions across 11 countries, delivering tailored financing solutions for women entrepreneurs and expanding access to capital where it’s needed most.
Partnering with Funds to Shift the Investment Paradigm
ADB is partnering with over 20 private equity funds, with the number steadily increasing, across Asia and the Pacific to advance gender lens investing strategies that not only promote women’s economic empowerment but also strengthen economic and social resilience across the region. These partnerships help shift the investment paradigm by integrating gender analysis into fund origination, portfolio management, and impact measurement.
Private equity funds such as Navegar, Growtheum, Lombard Asia, and KV Asia have adopted ADB’s gender equality scorecard to embed a gender lens into their investment processes, ensuring that gender considerations are systematically evaluated across portfolio companies. Meanwhile, funds like ABC Impact, Northstar, and Creador are leveraging the 2X Challenge framework to shape their gender lens investing methodologies and drive gender-inclusive outcomes. Others, such as Quadria, have developed proprietary gender inclusive impact tools to monitor and enhance gender equality performance across their investments. By embedding gender considerations into their investment strategies, these funds are helping to build more resilient and equitable economies—particularly across sectors such as healthcare, education, workforce development, agriculture, and financial services, which are essential to inclusive and sustainable growth.
Extending this momentum into the venture capital space, ADB’s Ventures Fund 1 is setting a new benchmark for gender-inclusive innovation. Notably, 32% of the startups supported by the fund were founded by women, a figure that far exceeds global averages and reflects ADB’s intentional focus on inclusive entrepreneurship. Beyond founder diversity, the fund applies a gender lens to all of its investments, ensuring that gender considerations are embedded in both strategy and execution.
These investments are not just about equality—they’re about equipping women to lead in sectors that are central to crisis response and recovery. By supporting women-led businesses and those that deliver goods and services improving women’s lives, ADB is helping build more adaptive, inclusive, and future-ready economies.
A Call to Action: Scaling Inclusive Resilience
The case for women’s inclusion in resilience-building is clear—and the time to act is now. As we prepare to convene at the 2X Global Summit 2025, co-hosted by ADB, we have a pivotal opportunity to accelerate collaboration and shape a bold agenda for inclusive resilience. We call on investors, policymakers, and development partners to move beyond commitments and into coordinated, transformative action. Let’s scale gender lens investing, embed inclusion in every stage of crisis response, and elevate women’s leadership where it matters most. Together, we can unlock the full potential of women as architects of resilient economies and societies. Join us in shaping a future where resilience is truly inclusive—and where women are empowered to lead transformative change in the face of global challenges.
