What I found when I began reporting, however, was that even in the poorest and most traditional countries, women owned businesses that went well beyond the micro. In Rwanda, I met a gas station owner with several workers and a woman selling fruits and vegetables -- not on "the side of the road" but rather for export to Belgium twice a week. Her work created jobs for eight people at the time, including her husband, and supported her own and several other adopted children. In Sarajevo, I met a textile entrepreneur, with a new factory near the old front lines, whose company selling bed and bath linens employed 20 people, mostly women, who could now afford to send their own children to school.
And in Afghanistan, famous for being among the toughest environments for women to thrive, I met a young woman who dared to turn down a well-paying job offer filled with perks from an international aid organization in order to start a business consultancy that she believed would create jobs for herself and many others. "If I go and work with an international agency, they will give me a very high salary, but it is just for me and my family, it will not support other people," Kamila Sidiqi told me at the time, in 2005. "If I work to start my own company, I will train a lot of people, I will help a lot of people."
Sidiqi's belief in the power of growing businesses to help lift her country out of poverty was shared by the women I met across borders and geographies. Though the context was different, the challenges they faced looked remarkably similar:
