Because microfinance is so manageable in terms of the size of the loan, people have made it the cornerstone to lifting women out of poverty.

Microfinance does not require previous experience or loans to the same extent as a small-business loan, so it's easier for women to enter the micro sector.

Entrepreneurship isn't for everyone, and not everyone is going to be an entrepreneur, but women who turn to business, turn to economics, because there are people depending on them, I think that their creativity, their resilience, their spirit, embody what's best about entrepreneurship.

In Nigeria, along with its West African neighbor Ghana, women are now starting businesses in greater numbers than men.

We are so used to seeing women as victims of war to be pitied rather than survivors of war to be respected.

Numerically speaking, half the population cannot be a minority. Yet when it comes to women, the numbers plainly show that the mathematically impossible is the socially acceptable.