Technology is making it easier for women to connect to business opportunities around the world. Legal obstacles must not be allowed to stand in their way. That's not just because it's economically smart. It's because discrimination shouldn't be the law.

Entrepreneurs - both women and men - need equal and fair access to finance - to create new businesses, to reach to new markets, and to adapt to climate change.

The social and legal discrimination that relegates hundreds of women to subordinate or marginal economic roles has a huge aggregate cost.

Responsive governments committed to improving the broader trade facilitation and business environment can help companies of all sizes by improving infrastructure: roads, transportation, ports, information and communication technology, and electricity.

We survey companies and ask them what the barriers to export and import are. Once we map these barriers, we sit down with the companies on one side and the government and regulatory agencies on the other and help them identify obstacles to trade and what has to be done to tackle them.

The social and legal discrimination that relegates hundreds of women to subordinate or marginal economic roles has a huge aggregate cost.

Governments everywhere have ministries dedicated to women's affairs. I know of only one with a Ministry for Women Empowerment: Indonesia. Charged with the 'realization of gender equality and justice' together with children's well-being, the ministry frames gender equality as a matter of justice.