September 2025 - BRAC Institute of Governance and Development

From Product Design to Resilience: Rethinking Women’s Financial Inclusion

Posted on 25 September 2025 | by BIGDAdmin | Leave a Comment

Woman-cleaning-maize-in-Ghana_Axel-Fassio_090322 — Photo by Axel Fassio/CIFOR, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Picture this: a woman in rural Malawi receives a free smartphone and training on how to use mobile money. Nine months later, she’s digitally fluent—sending payments, managing savings, building confidence. By year three, her phone is broken, her account is dormant, and her husband controls the household’s only working device.

But in the kinds of statistics that fill global dashboards, she is still counted as “financially included,” because inclusion is defined by account ownership, not by whether that account remains active or under her control.

This isn’t just one woman’s story. It is what happens when we celebrate access without asking whether that access lasts, protects, and empowers women.

The Limits of the Access Paradigm

In 2018, I wrote in The Daily Star that “financial inclusion for women is not going to be achieved by trying to make women bankable, but by ensuring that financial services, products, and systems are women-focused.” At that time, the focus was on access: how many women had accounts, whether products matched their needs, and how quickly gaps could be closed.

That approach delivered visible progress. According to the Global Findex 2025, account ownership now stands at 81% for men and 77% for women worldwide—merely a four-point gap. While account ownership rose for both men and women since 2021, the gender gap itself has held steady at four points.

But the picture is uneven. In Bangladesh, only 34 percent of women have an account, compared to 52 percent of men — a gap of almost 20 percentage points, roughly five times the global average. And in South Asia, nearly one in five adults who receive government transfers depend on someone else to make the withdrawal, showing that access does not always equal control.

The logic of the last decade was clear: remove barriers, design women-friendly products, and tally the number of accounts opened. But as access expanded, complications grew. Digital savings groups flourished—and so did digital harassment. Mobile money created new opportunities—and new risks of surveillance and financial abuse. We built for women’s needs, but in doing so, also introduced new risks of surveillance, financial abuse, or harassment.

The WEE-DiFine White Paper and WEE-Connect White Paper both highlight this tension: digital tools can expand women’s privacy and opportunities, but without the right support they can also create new vulnerabilities.

When Evidence Challenged Assumptions

Research over the past years has shown how fragile inclusion can be if resilience is not in-built.

In Malawi, the study Improving Women’s Economic Empowerment Through Mobile Phones and Training tested whether smartphones, combined with training, either one-on-one or with a spouse, versus unconditional cash transfers [1] could best support women’s financial inclusion. Women who received smartphones with individualized training sustained digital use over time; women who received cash transfers did not. When trained alongside a spouse, husbands often became the primary users of the device. By 32 months, most women no longer had the phone. Access on paper masked the reality of lost or shared control.

Evidence from an impact evaluation of Chhattisgarh’s Sanchaar Kranti Yojana (SKY) program highlights a different challenge: affordability alone is not enough. The study Pathways to Women’s Empowerment through Smartphone-Enabled Digital Finance evaluated the program in which it distributed more than 4 million free smartphones while expanding high-speed LTE mobile internet. Four years later, women in SKY communities were no more likely to use smartphones or DFS than women in non-SKY areas. Even among phone owners, gaps persisted: women were nearly 30 percentage points less likely than men to be aware of DFS apps, and only 5% of women—compared to 30% of men—had used such an app in the past year. These findings show that affordability and access did not always translate into equal use.

An RCT in Uganda highlights yet another dimension. The study Digital Cash Transfers, Privacy, and Women’s Economic Empowerment found that women who received unconditional cash transfers via mobile money reported higher incomes and greater decision-making power than women who received transfers in cash. But women receiving cash—especially when transfers were public to both spouses—reported lower levels of intimate partner violence. Autonomy and safety did not always align.

Why Resilience Must be the New Standard

Across these contexts, the lesson is the same: access is not the same as agency. Delivery matters — individualized training paired with technology built more lasting engagement than cash or couples approaches. Affordability alone is not enough — without digital skills and supportive norms, free devices did little to close gaps. And modality choices shape outcomes — digital transfers strengthened income and decision-making, while cash transfers offered greater protection against violence. Together, these lessons show why the next phase of financial inclusion must focus on resilience: building systems that anticipate real conditions, ensure devices last, pair access with skills and norm change, and protect women’s privacy and safety within households. Resilience is not an add-on. It is the measure of whether inclusion endures.

Looking Ahead

The difference between 2018 and 2025 reflects both progress and learning. In 2018, the call was to make products women-focused. Today, it must be to make systems resilient for women.

As the global community gathers for Financial Inclusion Week 2025, BIGD’s WEE Initiatives (both WEE DiFine and WEE Connect) will take up these questions in our session, “When Digital Hurts: How DFS Can Expose Vulnerabilities for Women,” because the future of financial inclusion cannot be judged only by the number of accounts opened. It must be judged by whether those accounts deliver safety, agency, and dignity.

So the question is no longer how many women are inside the system. The real question is this: does inclusion protect them—or does it put them at risk?

[1] The cash transfers were set to the same value as the smartphones to make the comparison fair.

An Unfinished Revolution of Women in Macro Politics: Takeaways from DUCSU Election 2025

Posted on 23 September 2025 | by BIGDAdmin | Leave a Comment

The July Revolution of 2024 brought with it a wave of hope for a more inclusive political landscape in Bangladesh. The revolution’s promise of equality and reform fueled unprecedented expectations for women’s political participation. Yet, a year later, that promise seems to have been largely unfulfilled.

While the rhetoric of “female” inclusion persists in formal speeches and declarations, women’s participation national politics remains a distant dream. This stark contrast is particularly evident when comparing the political environment of student council elections, like the ongoing event of Dhaka University Central Students’ Union (DUCSU), with the national political arena. Right now, 62 female candidates are competing in the DUCSU election for the central position, while female leaders are rare in national politics. The question is, why does a university campus offer more fertile ground for female leadership than the national stage? The answer may lie in the distinct requirements and systemic barriers that define each domain.

The upsurge in female student participation in DUCSU elections represents a hopeful paradox within Bangladesh’s challenging political environment. How are women becoming prominent in student councils in this environment, and why don’t we see a similar trend in national politics?

This discrepancy highlights the core issue: the fundamental differences in the demands regarding leadership – demands of campus politics versus national politics. University politics, while competitive, is often more progressive, inclusive, and insulated, especially following the student-mass revolution. The issues at hand are immediate and community-focused, such as campus safety, academic rights, and residential hall facilities. This creates a direct and tangible link between a candidate’s actions and the outcome, making the political process more transparent and rewarding for those who are genuinely committed to change. In this environment, female candidates don’t need the “money or muscle power” that is so often required to compete in national elections. The significant presence of female candidates in recent DUCSU elections proves that when these barriers are lowered, women not only participate but also lead.

Besides, student politics provides a unique space for young women to sharpen their leadership skills without the crushing financial burdens or the threat of severe political violence. The national political arena, conversely, is defined by an entrenched system where success is often predicated on a candidate’s financial and physical power. This reality is reflected in BIGD’s “Youth Politics in Bangladesh” research project. In this study, we found that: a woman’s political prospects in a locality like Sreepur, for instance, are often judged based on the “good family or personal background” of her husband or father, a clear indication that personal merit is secondary to an inherited, male-centric network. This is a vicious cycle where a woman’s value in politics is measured by the pre-existing “money or muscle power” of the men in her life, rather than her own attributes and activities. While both men and women in this society need these resources, women face far more pressure and are burdened with acquiring them, making survival in national politics “nearly impossible” for many.

Furthermore, woman’s political identity, whether new or old, is constantly under threat of character assassination and slut-shaming, regardless of her merits or dedication. It’s a system where “constructive criticism” is replaced by personal attacks based on gender, and social media and the internet have made this situation infinitely worse;

Therefore, the challenges for women in national politics extend beyond financial and security concerns to a deep-seated patriarchal culture that values women for their symbolic roles rather than their substantive contributions. Even women with established political backgrounds are not immune to this pervasive male-dominated culture. Having no established political background makes it makes it even more difficult. The common thread in both cases is that these women, despite their different levels of experience and political backgrounds, faced backlash simply because of “man”-ly politics.

So, the path forward requires a deliberate and multi-pronged approach to dismantle these systemic barriers. First of all, political parties must move past “tokenism” and truly invest in qualified and deserving female candidates by providing a safe space and ensuring their political rights and agency. Otherwise, only showcasing female representation could lead to tremendous backlash. Moreover, all stakeholders need to work together to cultivate a political culture where debate is substantive, not personal, and where women are not judged by a different, harsher standard. Lastly, perhaps most importantly, genuine female participation will only be ensured if there is deep-rooted reform within political parties themselves. This means practicing internal party democracy and ensuring transparency in party financing, which are crucial for creating a truly enabling environment for women in national politics. Otherwise, as previously mentioned, their position will continue to depend solely on dynasty or money. Therefore, without these fundamental changes, Bangladesh’s revolution towards a truly inclusive democracy will remain an unfinished one.

From Access to Agency: Why Digital Tools Alone Aren’t Enough for Women’s Empowerment

Posted on 7 September 2025 | by BIGDAdmin | Leave a Comment

WEE DiFine Conference_main blog picture — Participants of the Access to Agency Conference (July 2–3, 2025, Accra, Ghana), co-hosted by BIGD and IPA, gathered to explore pathways from digital access to women’s agency.

The question seems straightforward: if women lack access to digital financial services, shouldn’t giving them smartphones and mobile wallets solve the problem? This intuitive logic drives development programs worldwide. Yet, emerging evidence suggests the answer is far more complex.

From July 2-3, 2025, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners gathered in Accra, Ghana, for the Access to Agency: Empowering Women through Digital Inclusion conference, hosted by the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD) and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA). The two-day event brought together nearly 200 participants in person and many more online to examine a question critical to women’s economic empowerment: even when women gain access to phones, mobile wallets, or the internet: why does genuine empowerment so often remain out of reach?

The answer, as participants explored across sessions and studies, lies in the gap between access—owning or using a phone, a mobile wallet, or the internet—and agency, defined here as women’s ability to make and act on meaningful choices using those tools.

So, what does it take for digital access to translate to genuine agency for women? While access to technology is essential, it is not sufficient; digital tools contribute to women’s empowerment only when paired with skills, supportive environments, and opportunities to exercise decision-making power.

Scott Graham, presenting findings from Adapting and Validating WEE Indicators in an Experimental Study of Savings at a session on “Rethinking Women’s Empowerment in a Digital World”.

Measuring Empowerment: Why Definitions Matter

The challenge begins with how women’s economic empowerment is conceptualised and measured. Scott Graham, presenting findings from Adapting and Validating WEE Indicators in an Experimental Study of Savings, underscored that how we define and measure empowerment shapes our understanding of progress. His study focused on developing and validating context-specific indicators of women’s economic empowerment in rural Uganda. Graham highlighted the importance of grounding measurement frameworks in the local context to best capture nuanced shifts in agency, ensuring that indicators resonate with women’s actual experiences, rather than imposing external definitions.

Other presentations reinforced this point from different angles. Kalyani Raghunathan’s work emphasised that empowerment is multidimensional and cannot be reduced to income or work force participation alone. Frameworks like the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) and the newer Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems (WEMENSS) provide ways to assess decision-making power, resource control, and agency at scale. Together, these studies underscored that measuring empowerment can require both standardised tools for comparability and context-specific indicators that reflect women’s lived realities.

Beyond the Device: Why Access Alone Falls Short

Dean Karlan delivers his keynote address on digital inclusion as a pathway to women’s empowerment.

If measurement frames how we understand empowerment, Dean Karlan reminded participants in his keynote that program design determines whether empowerment is actually achieved. “Merely including women in existing initiatives does not lead to meaningful empowerment,” he added. Globally, 2.4 billion women still face unequal economic rights, underscoring the scale of the challenge.

Research presented by Philip Roessler in Improving Women’s Economic Empowerment through Mobile Phones and Training in Malawi and Simone Schaner in Pathways to Women Empowerment through Smartphone-Enabled Digital Finance echoed this finding: even when women own smartphones or are registered for digital financial services, many lack the decision-making authority or digital literacy to use them meaningfully.

Amnesty LeFevre and Mayank Date, in their study Optimizing Measurement of Women’s Access to and Use of Technology in Mobile-First Populations, introduced the Digital Access and Use (DAU) Index. In one study site, 70% of women who owned a phone still depended on others to perform mobile money transactions—a striking reminder that device ownership does not automatically translate into digital inclusion in the absence of autonomy and technological literacy.

Designing for Women’s Realities

Marieme Esther Dassanou presenting “Advancing Gender-Transformative Digital Connectivity: Policy and Practice.”

Digital tools themselves often fail women because they are not built with women’s constraints in mind. As Marieme Esther Dassanou expressed in her keynote, “Design must start with her, keep her at the center, and end with her.”

This principle was illustrated in multiple contexts. Victor Kolo’s Empowering Women Domestic Workers: Qualitative Investigation on the Impact of DFS on Women’s Economic Empowerment in Nigeria showed that although mobile phone ownership is common in southwest Nigeria, women’s digital financial inclusion remains limited. Where accessible, low-cost mobile banking offered privacy and a sense of independence, but the research emphasised that true empowerment also requires sector formalisation, DFS literacy, cybersecurity awareness, and stronger ICT infrastructure.

Similarly, Samyuktha Kannan’s Leveraging Digital Technology to Make Crop Insurance More Accessible to Women: The Effects of Flexible Payment Schedules on Women’s Uptake and Bargaining Power found that nearly 90% of women farmers preferred customisable, flexible crop insurance payments, with uptake especially high among less financially empowered women. Designing financial products around women’s realities proved essential for meaningful empowerment.

Building Skills and Overcoming Barriers

Conference discussions made clear that access to devices must be paired with support structures that help women translate technology into real gains.

Caroline Wainana’s Digital Finance, Women’s Empowerment & Maternal Mental Health in Kenya found that mobile financial services alone were not associated with improvements in women’s wellbeing. Gains emerged only when programs paired DFS with peer support groups and community-based education.

Matthew Bird’s Interactive Mobile Games & Fraud Prevention showed how design tailored to women’s realities can make a difference: interactive, user-centered games significantly outperformed generic awareness materials in building fraud awareness, improving knowledge retention, and shifting behaviour. His study underscored that when tools are engaging, context-specific, and designed with women in mind, they can strengthen confidence and safety in digital spaces.

Even with well-designed tools and training, persistent gender norms and household dynamics continue to limit women’s use of technology. As shown in Pathways to Women Empowerment through Smartphone-Enabled Digital Finance, Simone Schaner asserted that simply providing phones was not enough. Women’s engagement was often mediated — or restricted — by male household members, underscoring the need for complementary support such as training and context-specific design to ensure meaningful digital empowerment.

Elijah Kipchumba’s Digital Finance and Intra-Household Decision-Making: Evidence from Mobile Money Use in Kenya reinforced this finding: while mobile money offered women privacy, it did not automatically give them greater decision-making power within households. This suggests that if digital finance is to strengthen women’s agency, programs must go beyond individual access to also address household-level dynamics and norms.

Discussions on women’s participation in gig work—presented by Rico Bergemann and Terry Muthahhari through Women in Gig Platform Driving: Descriptive Evidence from India and Indonesia—revealed further barriers: mobility restrictions, networking gaps, and expectations around domestic responsibilities continue to constrain women’s digital opportunities, especially for married women. The findings point to the importance of complementary measures such as safe transport, childcare support, and professional networks to enable women to participate more fully in digital labor markets.

Safety, Privacy, and Trust in Digital Spaces

Empowerment also depends on women’s sense of safety and trust when engaging digitally.

In her inaugural remarks, Madam Sabia Aku Kpekata, speaking on behalf of Ghana’s Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, noted that digital spaces expose women to fraud, harassment, and abuse, particularly in informal economies. She highlighted Ghana’s establishment of a National Cyber Security Centre, the 2024 Affirmative Action (Gender Equity) Act 1121, and the ongoing review of the National Gender Policy to ensure gender-sensitive safeguards in ICT use.

Francis Annan’s Gender and Financial Misconduct in Mobile Money found that about 25% of mobile money users in the sample survey experience overcharging, with female agents more likely to overcharge female customers—showing that gender bias can cut in unexpected ways.

Munshi Sulaiman’s Digital Cash Transfers, Privacy & Women’s Empowerment in Uganda added nuance, showing that while mobile money transfers enhanced women’s autonomy, cash transfers were linked to a greater reduction in intimate partner violence. The findings suggest trade-offs with regard to these two modalities and reinforce the need to integrate consumer protection and safety measures into DFS design.

Towards Integrated, Context-Driven Solutions

Participants networking and sharing ideas during the Access to Agency Conference, highlighting the importance of integrated, context-driven solutions.

Taken together, the research and dialogue from Accra made one point inescapable: there is no one-size-fits-all path to women’s digital empowerment.

As the conference takeaways are summarised:

Access does not mean agency.
Integrated solutions— combining technology, training, user-centered design, and structural change—work best.
Context matters: interventions must reflect women’s lived realities.
Training is crucial: building women’s digital and financial skills can lead to lasting gains.

As Ernest Aryeetey reminded participants in his keynote, research and policy must start from communities’ own definitions of empowerment and success, not just donor benchmarks.

Ernest Aryeetey delivering his keynote remarks on the importance of grounding research and policy in communities’ own definitions of empowerment.

Digital inclusion can open extraordinary opportunities for women — but only if it equips them with choice, knowledge, and control. As the conversations in Accra made clear, the future of digital empowerment will not be shaped by devices alone, but by the ecosystems built around them. Access may open the door, but agency is what allows women to walk through it on their own terms.

📌 This article highlights only a subset of studies and discussions from the Access to Agency Conference. For the full agenda, list of speakers, and session recordings, click here.

Towards a People-Centric Police Force

Posted on 5 September 2025 | by BIGDAdmin | Leave a Comment

On August 27, protesting students of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) and several other engineering universities were intercepted by law enforcers during a protest and dispersed using tear gas, sound grenades, batons, and water cannons.

On March 25, a clash broke out between police and garment workers when law enforcers charged at them with batons and allegedly deployed sound grenades and tear gas in response to protesters demonstrating for unpaid wages, Eid bonuses, and leave.

On March 12, several teachers from private primary schools were charged with batons and water cannons by the Bangladesh police authorities, as they protested against the current government for not accepting their demand for the nationalisation of primary schools.

These incidents, coming months after the fall of the Awami League regime in August 2025, reveal that accountability remains elusive despite widespread public distrust. The police continue to use excessive force against citizens exercising their right to protest, justifying their actions as retaliation against protesters who attacked them. It is deeply concerning that the culture of impunity seen before and during the July 2024 revolution still casts its shadow over the country.

Police as an Agent of Political Agendas

The July 2024 uprising revealed the extent of political control exerted through policing, yet this is only part of a broader pattern, as reports of torture and abuse in custody continue to surface. In August 2025, Durjoy Chowdhury, an office assistant at a government school in Chokoria, Cox’s Bazar, died while in police custody. Police claimed he took his life, but his family contests this account, alleging custodial abuse. In October 2024, Raihan Ahmed was picked up by the police in Sylhet, and died the next day. Following a case filed under the Torture and Custodial Death (Prevention) Act by his wife, an investigation team of Sylhet Metropolitan Police found the allegation of torture of Raihan in police custody as true. The main accused has since been released on bail.

A functional democracy requires accountable and transparent law enforcement. While the formation of the Police Reform Commission is a welcome first step, similar initiatives were launched in previous years and failed to bring about any meaningful change. In 2005, a police reform program was initiated to fulfil a vision of five fundamental strategic changes to the institution: organisational reform, community policing, enhanced training, the inclusion of women in the police force, and gender sensitisation, as well as IT integration. This was largely met with rejection by police personnel, particularly senior officials. While some limited reforms were implemented (such as the inclusion of women police officials), citizen-centric ideas were mostly discarded.

The most important stakeholders in police reform are the citizens themselves. This is why citizen-centered policing—grounded in robust public oversight and accountability mechanisms—is essential when envisioning meaningful reform. A paper published by the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD), ‘A People’s Police: Reform Suggestions for a Democratic Police’, authored by Faruq Hossain, Inteemum Ahsan, and Md. Al-Mamun, explains that while people acknowledge the “centrality of the institution in upholding law and order”, they also believe that any effective reform must involve structural changes paired with changes in the police-citizen relationship. Based on a study conducted in the Tala thana of Satkhira, the paper draws on interviews of participants from a diverse range of occupations, including teachers, businessmen, farmers, housewives, students, politicians, retired service holders, police personnel, and representatives of the local government.

Democratic Policing: What It Means and How It’s Done

As it currently stands, the police are often perceived as serving ruling-party interests, wielding significant coercive and repressive powers against the public. Democratic policing, on the other hand, stresses “mutual cooperation”, where citizens and the police work together to establish trust and ensure equitable policing practices.

Such a system could also encourage a shift in the use of law enforcement agencies as partisan tools. When a new political party comes to power, the police are often subjected to various harassment and punishment, such as transfers or demotions, for having served the interests of the previous regime. BIGD’s paper suggests that in a democratic model of policing, citizens would feel empowered to support the police, instead of viewing them as a repressive force or an instrument of the regime. This could pressure political powers to reconsider their exploitation of law enforcement for partisan gain, as democratic control and heightened public scrutiny increase the demand for political accountability.

Public Suggestions for a Democratic Police

Respondents of the BIGD study suggested several types of reforms, emphasising a strong interest in a community-driven approach to accountability, with suggestions ranging from “deploying monitoring cells, involving third parties in conflict resolution by deploying a neutral party,” to “fostering reciprocity between the police and the public, and building stronger connections with the police”.

Building on these suggestions, the paper suggests that a citizen-led thana-based committee could be established in Bangladesh to support the police in maintaining local peace and order, report violations of law, and raise public awareness about police procedures, regulations, and citizens’ legal rights.

The committee, comprising a maximum of 15 people—with members including teachers, socially influential individuals, student leaders, non-governmental organisation workers, retired government officials, and union chairmen, alongside partisan individuals from the local community— irrespective of wealth, religion, gender, or other discriminating factors selected through deliberative community elections. The selection will be a discussion-based process rather than a vote-based one. The OC of the thana could serve as the member secretary of the committee, responsible for convening and organising meetings every three months. To minimise the risk of political subservience, the committee’s tenure should be half of the central government’s term.

Respondents also advocated for a legal foundation to ensure legitimacy and public trust. Apart from administrative and social recognition, the committee should have some degree of authority to enforce its decisions. Respondents also argued for capacity-building initiatives, alongside measures to ensure transparent operations, to ensure that the committee remains effective and free of corruption. To prevent ruling party control over the police, a parliament-centered model of accountability—established through a clear and transparent oversight framework—has been proposed.

There are concerns that political actors may resist the formation of such a committee, as well as doubts about how truly non-partisan and inclusive it can be. However, with a strong legal framework and parliamentary backing, a people-centered committee could lay the foundation for a police force that serves public interests rather than the agenda of the ruling regime.