Conversations about empowerment often celebrate women who have broken barriers in boardrooms, politics, and industry. Yet across the country — in public markets, coastal barangays, weaving communities, and home-based kitchens — millions of women quietly sustain families and local economies through informal work.

They are vendors, farmers, food processors, caregivers, and micro-entrepreneurs. They form the backbone of the informal economy — but remain largely invisible to formal financial systems and national development planning.

It is now that the proposed Poverty Reduction through Social Entrepreneurship (PRESENT) Bill is gaining steam in Congress. In a nutshell, the PRESENT Bill aims to institutionalize social enterprises as part of poverty reduction by providing legal recognition and financial support specifically for social entrepreneurs.  Multiple versions of this bill have been previously filed over the last decade, with the most recent being HB 1830 filed by Bukidnon Representative Joeman Alba.

Dr. Marie Lisa Dacanay, founding president of the Institute for Social Entrepreneurship in Asia and convener of the PRESENT Coalition, explained how the bill could reshape economic opportunity for women at the grassroots — and why its passage matters now more than ever – in an exclusive interview. “It’s a legal framework to recognize the development of social enterprises as partners in ensuring that the marginalized can become stakeholders of the formal economy in a just way.”

The informal economy refers to businesses and jobs that operate outside government regulation. These include enterprises that are not formally registered, do not pay taxes, or lack official labor protections.

Globally, the International Labour Organization estimates that around 2.1 billion workers — or more than 60% of the world’s employed population — work in the informal economy, with women disproportionately represented in vulnerable forms of employment. Women make up a large share of this workforce and are often concentrated in the most vulnerable jobs.

In many developing countries, women are more likely than men to work informally and less likely to have access to social protection such as insurance, pensions, or stable contracts. 

In the Philippines, surveys by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) peg the country’s annual self-rated poverty at 51 percent as of 2025.

“Social enterprises are part of the formal economy,” Dacanay explains. “Social enterprises can come in as a formal entity that assists [informal workers]— providing capital, markets, and support so they can thrive.”

For women who lack IDs, bank accounts, or registered businesses, the path to formalization can be daunting. The PRESENT Bill envisions social enterprises as intermediary institutions that help informal workers transition into formal economic participation. Instead of replacing informal workers, social enterprises often organize them into networks of suppliers, partners, or members. 

Traditional companies typically focus on maximizing profit for shareholders. Social enterprises, on the other hand, integrate a social mission into their business model. This may involve paying fair prices to farmers, employing marginalized communities, promoting sustainable production, or sharing profits with workers.

Without institutionalized recognition of this business model, social enterprises must fit themselves into either corporate or nonprofit frameworks that fail to account for their hybrid structure.

One of the biggest challenges facing women entrepreneurs is access to financing.

Many lending programs require borrowers to provide collateral such as land titles or other valuable assets. For women who do not own property, this requirement can make loans almost impossible to obtain.

The PRESENT Bill proposes a different approach known as hybrid financing. This would combine grants with loans that do not require collateral, supported by a government-backed guarantee fund.

While the Department of Trade and Industry recently allocated P2 billion for the Women's Enterprise Fund through its financing arm Small Business Corporation, these remain collateralized loans, albeit with favorable terms including a one-year grace period and flexible repayment.

Dacanay notes that banks often rely on collateral rather than properly evaluating business feasibility, which systematically disadvantages women without titled assets.

Moreover, the bill explicitly establishes a special credit line for women-led social enterprises that support and empower women.

Beyond financing, the PRESENT Bill addresses another critical barrier: market access. The mainstream market is dominated by those who can churn out the most products at the lowest possible price, regardless of social or environmental impact.

Among the aspirations of the social enterprise sector, Dacanay shares, is "the development of a social enterprise Lazada, or a social enterprise Shopee" that would embody ethical principles including reduced plastic packaging and circular economy practices. 

For women producers — whether weaving indigenous textiles or processing coconut products — such a marketplace could offer stable income and fair pricing, rather than forcing them into race-to-the-bottom pricing structures.

Another provision of the PRESENT Bill involves using "economic subsectors" as the unit of planning. 

Rather than supporting isolated actors, the state would invest in entire value chains — from raw material sourcing to processing to marketing. "The objective is not just to reduce poverty na tingi-tingi," Dacanay emphasizes. "That percentage cannot be reduced by just 1%. You should reduce it substantively."

In the Philippine Development Plan 2023-2028, the Philippine government has set an ambitious target of achieving single-digit poverty by 2028. The PRESENT Coalition argues that scaling social entrepreneurship — particularly in sectors where women are heavily represented — could significantly contribute to that goal.

Notably, women are disproportionately represented in social entrepreneurship compared to conventional business. Based on data from the Schwab Foundation, one in two social enterprises worldwide is women-led, compared to one in five conventional businesses. 

What distinguishes women-led social enterprises from conventional women-led businesses, Dacanay suggests, is their engagement with grassroots women. "’Yung social enterprises that are women-led are actually engaging women to be empowered. ‘Pag tiningnan mo ‘yung ginagawa ng ibang programs, they're just concerned about making women entrepreneurs."

The PRESENT Bill remains pending in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Previously in the Senate, the bill was filed by Senators Kiko Pangilinan, Risa Hontiveros, and Loren Legarda. Department of Trade and Industry secretary Cristina Roque also put out an official statement in support of the bill: “Many [social enterprises] are women-led, transforming not only their own lives but also those of marginalized women.”

As the nation marks Women’s Month this March, it is fitting to spotlight policies that seek not only to empower women individually but also to transform systems that shape economic participation, equity, and opportunity.

Still, Dacanay added, there are more ways than legislation to support women’s economic justice, such as working with local government units or executive agencies. “With or without the law, pwede pa rin.”