BRICS Conference Highlights Gaps in Women Entrepreneur Trade Access

India's approach to women's economic empowerment has evolved through two parallel tracks. The first is domestic financial inclusion. The Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana opened hundreds of millions of bank accounts, with women as a primary target group. The Self-Help Group (SHG) model, scaled through the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM), organised rural women into credit-linked collectives. The Mudra Yojana extended micro-credit to small entrepreneurs, with women consistently accounting for the majority of borrowers. These instruments addressed the credit barrier at the base of the pyramid.

The second track is trade and market access. India's export ambitions, targeting a significant expansion of merchandise and services exports over the coming decades, require a much larger share of small producers and service providers to connect to global value chains. The WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA), which India ratified and which entered into force, demonstrated that simplifying customs documentation and harmonising standards can meaningfully reduce the cost of cross-border trade for small exporters. The same principle applies within regional groupings: a common platform that mutually recognises product standards and simplifies paperwork lowers the entry barrier more than any promotional event can. Against a global backdrop where protectionism is rising and multilateral trade rules are under strain, regional arrangements like BRICS carry greater weight as alternative market-access channels for developing-country exporters.

The Jaipur Consensus, adopted at a recent BRICS meeting, committed member countries to exploring a common trade platform and a women's advancement fund. The language of 'exploration' is significant: it signals political agreement without operational commitment, a pattern familiar from multilateral processes where consensus is easier to achieve than capitalisation.