As Caribbean countries chart a post-pandemic future, evidence is mounting that one of the surest ways to accelerate growth is to empower women.Governments are right to help the millions of women who were laid off during the pandemic and need new skills to return to work. But we can also hasten growth by addressing the needs of a small but critical subset of women who’ve been working the whole time. That includes women who own or manage about 1.3 million small and midsize companies in Latin America and the Caribbean.Those women run a third of all small businesses in the region, which makes their success key to everyone’s future.Even before the pandemic, these companies faced barriers. The top hurdle has always been a lack of credit stemming from pervasive gender bias. Studies show that Caribbean women struggle to get commercial bank loans, even though they are more likely than men to repay them.