The focus is on cooperatives in Brazil, especially on women-owned enterprises, offering interest rates of 15%. That's compared to the 120% or so they would usually have to pay other lenders, according to CEO Taynaah Reis. The cooperative structure is common in Brazil, according to Reis; enterprises encompass everything from milk production plants to yucca farms.

What we are only beginning to recognize is that demeaning and devaluing women is an insidious, expensive problem. It’s not just the eye-popping settlements in some cases, like the $32 million paid by Bill O’Reilly to settle a harassment claim. Nor is it just the high salaries network stars have been making while allegedly assaulting subordinates, like the $20 million, or more, for Matt Lauer. It only starts there. The bigger cost derives from how women’s ideas are discounted and their talent ignored. I have seen it up close in the two worlds I know best: Wall Street, where I was chief executive of Smith Barney and of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, and in Silicon Valley, where I’ve raised money to run my start-up, Ellevest. These places are perhaps the purest microcosms of capitalism, and their lessons are instructive for all of us.