management buy in and leadership are also critical one of the key challenges is often the lack of sexdisaggregated data within portfolios and client bases however using proxy data can assist financiers to assess the opportunities internally exploring where if any prejudices lie and understanding the status of women in the existing portfolio from product and service use differences to repayment rates and portfolio shares and comparing this to the broader market status quo are first steps towards identifying opportunities the next step through consultation with managers and staff across the institution is to identify the target market and carry out an assessment of where this sits within the existing strategy set aside resources technical physical and human identify capacitybuilding requirements and set goals