Spotlight on Mexican SMEs leading the way on gender inclusion

At Value for Women, we are on a mission to create more and better opportunities for 10 million women by 2033.

With support from Visa Foundation, our Inclusive Action Hub engaged, trained, and supported a group of pioneering SMEs in Mexico exploring new and powerful ways to place women at the heart of their businesses and operations.

Inclusive Action Awards Mexico 2025

The inaugural 2025 Inclusive Action Awards celebrated SMEs advancing gender equality across workforce, leadership, supply chains, and customer bases. 1,000+ SMEs applied for the chance to win a USD $5,000 cash prize and visibility on a global stage.

We had the honor of hosting to hold our the Mexico Inclusive Action Awards ceremony during the GLI Forum LATAM 2025 in front of an audience of 250+ enterprises, intermediaries and investors interested in gender-lens investing in the region.

Congratulations to our winner, Kip Tik from Chiapas, for their incredible work training and employing Indigenous and rural women as cultural and economic leaders, and to our incredible finalists: Frenkel Engineering, Avanza Sólido, and La Cana.

Each is a powerful role model of enterprises putting women at the heart of their business models.

Our work in Mexico

Through our pilot, we reached over 2,500 Mexican SMEs throughout the country as part of our Inclusive Action Awards campaign, as well as numerous in-person activities:

  • Our campaign to promote and spotlight inclusive businesses in Mexico reached over 2,500 SMEs through events, targeted email outreach, LinkedIn publications, and mass mailing campaigns. We influenced and celebrated pioneering businesses rewriting the rules to create a more inclusive future for women, from Mexico City to Chiapas.

    Please note that our applications are closed. Stay tuned for updates.

Bootcamps

  • Capacity-strengthening workshops for small cohorts focused on key topics around inclusion. Through expert guidance and peer learning we supported 134 SMEs to strengthen their practices - including hiring more women, improving workplaces for women, and better serving women with products and services.

Accelerator

  • Through our personalized accelerator program SMEs received hands-on support from Value for Women’s experts to help prioritise and overcome barriers to strengthening  gender inclusive practices. 

A Spotlight on SMEs Leading The Change

134 Mexican SMEs that took part in capacity-strengthening through the Hub made concrete changes to business practices, including:

  • conducting gender gap analyses, 

  • making job opportunities more attractive for women, 

  • formalising pathways for women’s career growth 

  • developing plans to include more women microentrepreneurs in their supply chain.

  • Arely Luna Miranda

    Kuspit (Fintech) – 72 employees | 37.5% women

    During Inclusive Action Hub sessions, Arely identified and prioritised pathways to improve opportunities for women in the workforce. As a result, she introduced Kuspit’s first gender-disaggregated workforce report, and secured internal support for improvements, such as adjusting hiring processes. She’s now drafting a wage parity policy, partnering with women-focused platforms, and embedding gender data into staff evaluations.

  • Yanet Smith

    Velas El Faro (Candlemaking) – 35 employees | 50% women

    Yanet attended Inclusive Action Hub sessions to support her commitment to building an inclusive Candlemaking business that lifts up her community. She’s started tracking access to benefits among her workforce, to identify any gender (or other intersectional) gaps. She also formalised contractual arrangements with outsourcing partners to ensure good working conditions for women in the supply chain. 

Our Expertise

Value for Women brings over 12 years of experience supporting SMEs and financial institutions in Mexico and globally. Our proven approaches are now being scaled through the Inclusive Action Hub, helping businesses integrate gender equality at the core of their operations. 

At Value for Women, we are on a mission to create more and better opportunities for 10 million women by 2033.