Apologies if the following is already very well known. Possibly the best possible entry point for helping women in  rural situations is drinking water projects. In most countries collection of drinking water for the family is women's traditional responsibility. When a drinking water investment project is implemented thought has to be given to maintenance. This often means formation of a women's group to collect the small amounts of money required to maintain the pump/well/pipeline. This can then develop into a small savings and loans operation or other economic activity. This sort of arrangement worked well with the watershed rehabilitation projects financed by the World Bank in India 20-25 years ago. The inclusion of the drinking water component was a major contributing factor to the overall project success. For this reason i firmly beliieve it is always preferable to have drinking water as a component of a larger rural development project rather than self standing water projects which tragically miss the chance of more general economic development.