I saw the documentary and read the books from the people who did the Half The Sky documentary, and two of the things they said was:
a) if you give the money to the women, they usually spend it on sensible things like school fees or clothes for the kids or food or home repairs or some such. If you give it to the men, they tend to spend on cigarettes, alcohol, and sodas.
b) one of the big problems is they don't have a safe place to save, either there are no banks, the banks are unstable, or women aren't allowed to have an account. The simple and effective solution was to simply give the women a lock box. They make a group of women who have businesses or just want to make a savings and they all agree to deposit even a tiny sum once per month. The box changes hands between them and the key with another for safety, and withdrawals can only happen when they are all present. The test group of women this started with were in a country that had a civil war break out, and all the charity groups left. Years later, they returned, and these women had saved a lot and made investments with it to better their lives!
So maybe you could give women a little money and a lock box. ☺