Drawing on the frameworks offered by International Political Economy (IPE), this paper investigates the terms under which existing data collection mechanisms visualize women’s enterprise and advocates for the integration of IPE methodologies to highlight the contextual factors and their importance when considering the impact of international development initiatives on women’s entrepreneurship. Specifically, we trace how women’s enterprise has historically been an initiative promoted by national and international governments—and thus shaped by multiple agendas—, which has had a specific impact on the monitoring and evaluation of women’s enterprise that is not shared by men’s enterprise. This methodology used for this exploratory study is that of a scoping study. It is appropriate for a first attempt to identify more nuanced approaches to entrepreneurship policy formulation, approaches which may more successfully consider the multi-layered realities of women’s economic participation. For this exploratory study we choose to investigate the World Bank data on Women entrepreneurship and the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data, being two different types of data produced by different type of institutions. By exploring further qualitative indicators from the vast body of women’s enterprise research literature, the paper highlights informational limitations shaped by global data and identifies areas for improvement in current data collection and evaluation processes. The paper shows that addressing these gaps can promote a more comprehensive understanding of women’s enterprise and thus enhance the effectiveness of global initiatives in promoting women’s empowerment and financial inclusion. Therefore, alternative methods of data collection and evaluation are proposed, emphasizing the need for more inclusive, locally-driven models that can inform future policy adjustments. This includes the integration of mix-methods data collection frameworks with an emphasis on qualitative data that captures the lived experiences of women entrepreneurs, providing a more comprehensive view of entrepreneurship’s role in societal development.