Want to Invest in the Real Job Creators? Invest in Women.

Women aren’t micro–so why do they only get micro-loans? At TEDxWomen reporter Gayle Tzemach Lemmon argues that women running all types of firms– from home businesses to major factories– are the overlooked key to economic development.

— Gayle Tzemach Lemmon never set out to write about women entrepreneurs. She was simply looking for a great—and underreported—economics story after leaving ABC News for MBA study at Harvard to pursue her interest in economic development. What she found was women entrepreneurs in some of the toughest business environments creating jobs against daunting obstacles. Since then her writing on entrepreneurship has appeared in publications including the International Herald Tribune and Financial Times along with the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation. While working in finance at the global investment firm PIMCO, Lemmon went on to write a book about a young Afghan teacher-turned-entrepreneur whose dressmaking business supported women around her neighborhood under the Taliban. The Dressmaker of Khair Khana became a New York Times bestseller and the subject of a Harvard Business School case study. Now a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing editor-at-large for Newsweek Daily Beast, Lemmon continues to travel the world reporting on economic and development issues with a focus on women. She is author of the Newsweek March 2011 cover story “The Hillary Doctrine” and the September 2011 profile on U.N. Women’s Michelle Bachelet.