Category: Blogs

Over the past decade, Bangladesh has taken dedicated steps to expand financial inclusion. The BIGD International Conference: Making Digital Finance Work for Women in Dhaka showcased those efforts by sharing recent global insights on how to make digital finance work for women’s economic empowerment. For example, results from BIGD’s WEE-DiFine Initiative, which supports rigorous research at the intersection of digital finance and women’s economic empowerment, were unveiled during the event. In addition, the event sessions included an interactive poster presentation featuring global DFS innovations, and a panel discussion with industry experts on the digitalization of microfinance in Bangladesh. In all, the conference highlighted ways to make digital finance work for women’s economic empowerment with an emphasis on overcoming specific barriers and embracing opportunities related to digital microfinance in Bangladesh.

This blog post shares the Global Findex data presented at the conference highlighting the significant progress Bangladesh has made in financial inclusion overall and for women specifically in the past decade, and the barriers and opportunities that still exist.

Account ownership in Bangladesh rose by 21 percentage points in the past decade to reach more than half of all adults.

According to the Global Findex 2021, 53 percent of adults in the country own a financial account, a 21-percentage point increase from 2011 when only 32 percent of adults had one. Account ownership gaps between wealthier and poorer adults, and between more and less educated adults, narrowed significantly. Yet in the same period, the gender gap in account access between women and men increased to 20 percentage points from 11 percentage points (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Growth in mobile money accounts have narrowed the gender gap

Adults with an account (%), 2011-2021

Source: Global Findex database, 2021.

Why does gender inequity seem to be a more intractable financial inclusion challenge in Bangladesh compared with inequities related to income or education level? To answer that question, it helps to look closer at the dynamics driving financial inclusion in Bangladesh.

Mobile Money is Enabling Increased Equity in Financial Inclusion

Mobile money in Bangladesh has helped bring disadvantaged and vulnerable groups into the formal financial system. Twenty-nine percent of adults had a mobile money account in 2021, up from 3 percent in 2014, when the Global Findex first began collecting data on mobile money accounts. About half of all mobile money users, or 15 percent of adults, use mobile money as their only form of financial account.

Women have benefited from the rise in mobile money account ownership. Twenty percent of women owned mobile money accounts in 2021, up from 2 percent in 2011. The total increase in the share of women with an account of any kind since 2011 is also around 20 percentage points.

As women’s financial access has increased, so too has their use of different financial services—especially digital payments. Among women mobile money users, 82 percent used their account to make payments, including bill, merchant, or utility payments. About a third of women payment users also used their accounts to send remittances. In contrast, savings and borrowing via mobile money among women were low (4 percent and 7 percent, respectively), and 11 percent of women with a mobile money account used it to store money.

Cultural and Confidence Challenges are Restricting Mobile Money Benefits for Women

The appeal of mobile money lies in the fact that it provides an efficient, affordable, and safer alternative to traditional banking institutions. For instance, by eliminating the need to travel, mobile money accounts reduce social and administrative constraints so that women can safely receive money and transact while at home.

Yet field interviews conducted by the Global Findex team in Bangladesh also highlighted some challenges that keep women with mobile money accounts from benefiting as much from them as they could. For example, a women garment factory worker we spoke to told us that she sends her ATM card to her father living elsewhere in the country. She thereby lose autonomy over her salary.

There are multiple reasons why women may willingly relinquish control of their money. One relates to culture. An anthropological study led by BIGD explored woman’s DFS onboarding experiences in Bangladesh. As described at the BIGD conference, smartphones are sometimes considered taboo for women and girls, and women’s access to mobile banking agents—who are mostly men—might be constrained by women’s hesitation to give their phone number, necessary to access a mobile money account, to a male agent. Taking a photo to set up an account may also be problematic for women if they are required to remove their head coverings.

Even if a woman has successfully opened a mobile banking account, additional barriers may prevent her from enjoying its benefits. A WEE-DiFine-supported pilot study found that low levels of DFS awareness and cash flow constraints limited female domestic workers’ use of mobile banking. Few women in the study were aware of the link between economic independence and account ownership. Most women associated empowerment simply with higher wages, and not with personal agency or financial decision making. These perceptions may limit women’s motivation to deepen their use of mobile banking.

Beyond culture, there are other reasons why women may hand over control of their money to a male family member. A study conducted in Bangladesh during the early months of the pandemic found that 50 percent of digital financial service users relied on agents to complete transactions. The Global Findex reinforces that finding with data showing that nearly two-thirds of women with mobile money accounts need help using them. The takeaway is that while agents serve a key role in financial inclusion efforts, consumers who fully rely on them may be exposed to financial abuse and paying unsanctioned fees.

Barriers to Account Ownership may Further Limit Progress in Financial Access

The challenges noted above affect women who already have accounts. Additional barriers keep women without accounts (the ‘unbanked’) from embracing account ownership in the first place. The Global Findex survey asks unbanked adults about the financial inclusion barriers they face. The cost of opening and operating a financial account was named as a barrier by 42 percent of unbanked adults. Importantly, an additional 9 percent of adults said they “don’t know” when asked if cost was a barrier, suggesting these respondents do not know enough about digital financial services to have an opinion. In addition, over 60 percent of unbanked adults in Bangladesh say they would not be able to use a financial account (excluding mobile money) without help. Women were 12 percentage points more likely to say that than men.

These findings align with the baseline estimates from a WEE-DiFine-supported randomized controlled trial. They show that between 45 percent and 53 percent of respondents, depending on question framing [1],  indicated that mobile banking is too expensive. Additionally, between 29 percent and 50 percent believe mobile banking is hard to use. Finally, one third of women respondents indicated that mobile banking is not for someone “like them.” Together, these findings point to a lack of financial confidence as a barrier not only for banked women but also for the unbanked—one which may prevent them from proactively pursuing financial inclusion.

Governments and Financial Institutions Have a Role to Play in Building Women’s Financial Capability

A strong government-led consumer protection framework is critical for building trust and furthering the cause of financial inclusion. Governments can also help motivate greater financial autonomy for women by investing in digital public infrastructure (DPI), including biometric identification and digital financial accounts. Such infrastructure—key to broader digitalization across the Bangladeshi economy—would require women to own their own accounts and directly transact with them, a practice that has been shown to help people with less financial experience develop the capabilities they need to increase financial autonomy. Specifically, research has shown the benefits of using methods such “learning-by-doing” to build financial confidence. A study conducted with previously unbanked factory workers in Bangladesh included paying their wages into an account, and found that exposure to these new accounts enabled the workers to learn how to use them without assistance. Over time they used a wider range of features and learned to avoid illicit fees. Traditional classroom-based financial education, in contrast, has shown mixed results for improving financial capability.

Another approach to overcoming the barriers women face to financial inclusion is to digitalize more of the digital payment landscape across the country. In 2021, for example, only one-in-five private sector wage earners receive them into an account. In conjunction with gender-informed and culturally informed policies and practices (such as hiring more women as agents and working to remove stigma associated with mobile phone use by women), increased digitalization can help drive increased financial inclusion.

Digital financial services hold tremendous potential. To realize it, policymakers must promote the use of digital financial services and service providers must adopt a more customer-centric approach, including gender-inclusive financial services.

[1] Researchers designed two versions of survey questions to assess respondents’ attitudes – one version presented a positively-framed statement, and the other a negatively-framed statement. This design will allow researchers to assess to what extent responses are sensitive to question framing.

Leora Klapper and Kym Cole

U-Shaped Curves and Why-Shaped Trends

Dr Claudia Goldin’s extensive work on women’s labour force participation over the last century was recently awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics^[1]. Her account of structural transformations, shifting social norms, technological developments, and increasing educational attainment on women’s employment offers crucial insights into the dynamics shaping female labour force participation around the world. The state of women’s working lives in Bangladesh demonstrates interesting similarities, but also important contrasts, from the narrative Dr Goldin explores.

Dr Goldin’s famous U-shaped curve of female labour force participation highlights how the changing economic landscape of a society coalesces with gendered social norms to shape women’s employment^[2]. In this U-shaped curve, a shift from agricultural to industrial employment reduces female labour force participation. As the demand for women’s labour in (often home-based^[3] and flexible) agrarian activities diminishes, women’s employment declines.

When new opportunities in factory employment emerge, Dr Goldin argues, women are prevented from accessing them by gendered stigmas relating to manual work in the public sphere and by perceived threats to the capability of the male breadwinner. Furthermore, factory manufacturing roles lack the flexibility of home-based agricultural work, making it challenging for women to attend to their designated unpaid domestic and care responsibilities. However, as educational attainment rises and opportunities expand in more “appropriate” workplaces of the service sector, women’s employment again rises.

Technological innovations and changing tides of social norms simultaneously enable women to exert greater control over their reproductive and productive lives.

Bangladesh experienced a similar decline in women’s economic activities, as structural transformation shifted a traditionally subsistence-oriented agrarian society into rapidly urbanizing and expanding industrial and service sectors. Consistent with the U-shaped curve, female labour force participation has again increased. However, the factors underpinning this trend in Bangladesh diverge from the logic of Dr Goldin’s upturn. From the 1980s, Bangladesh’s industry burgeoned as the country positioned itself as a hub for ready-made garment (RMG) manufacture. The industry relied on a pool of predominantly female labour. Women engaging in factory employment renegotiated gendered norms around work and mobility in gradual and conflictual ways. Factory employment offered women income, and with growing economic independence came new freedoms. However, confronting the pervasive stigma attached to working outside the home, RMG employment also fostered new forms of risk, as factory workers often navigated household tensions and harassment.^[4]

Instead of industry growth correlating with a total decline in female employment, and contrary to the original U-shaped curve logic, the RMG industry precipitated Bangladesh’s increasing female labour force participation over the last four decades—in employment outside the home that challenged gender norms head on.

The story of women’s increasing employment in Bangladesh is dominated by the rise of employment outside the home in the RMG industry, but another important trend is also evident. While female employment has increased, none of this increase in more recent years has been from growth in employment outside the home. Instead, women’s work has increasingly shifted back toward home-based employment. Between 2003 and 2015, while the number of women working outside the home remained constant at six million, the number of those working from home increased from three million to nine million.^[5]

Home-based work has implications for the degree of economic empowerment women experience in relation to their employment, tending to be lower-skilled and lower-paid. Bangladesh has witnessed impressive gains in female educational attainment and fertility rate reductions—factors that, according to Dr Goldin’s experience, should facilitate women’s access to better quality jobs outside the home. Yet, as a proportion of total working women, those working outside the home have decreased dramatically.

There are a multitude of potential reasons suggested for this increase in home-based work. One argument is that increasing wealth allows for a resurgence of norms preferring female seclusion, in line with Dr Goldin’s U-shaped logic during industrialization. Another factor suggested to underpin increasing preferences for home-based work is the flexibility associated with balancing unpaid care work responsibilities—a dynamic that Dr Goldin’s work also shows to be central to women’s working lives.

The Tug of Care

Dr Goldin’s work highlights how women’s employment trajectories are shaped by the tug of war between demands at work and responsibilities at home. Gendered social norms designate unpaid care and domestic work to be the domain of women. This gendered distribution of responsibilities entails substantial workloads that go unaccounted for in most economic assessments but nonetheless contribute essential and valuable labour that enables households, communities, and societies to function.

Recent initiatives to capture the full picture of work—in all its unpaid and paid forms—offer insights into the extent to which women’s working lives are shaped by unpaid care. Bangladesh’s first national time-use survey, carried out in 2021, unveils these uneven, unpaid workloads: women spend an average of 4.6 hours on unpaid domestic work and 1.2 hours on unpaid caregiving daily, while men dedicate 0.6 and 0.2 hours to these activities, respectively, each day.^[6]

With 5.8 hours dedicated to domestic and care work each day, women in Bangladesh are already committed to a 40-hour unpaid week on top of any paid employment. Domestic tasks like laundry, cooking, and cleaning can be adjusted around rigid work commitments. Care work, however, especially for women with young children, is inherently inflexible and deeply personal. Even routine care tasks, such as feeding and bathing, require caregivers to be “on call,” nearby, and ready to respond to a grazed knee or a hungry cry. Norms of childcare provision beyond household networks are nascent in Bangladesh, with few accessible and affordable options for working parents.

With these large unpaid workloads made visible, the issue of the inaccessibility of work opportunities for women becomes clearer. Dr Goldin’s depiction of the tug of war between career and family takes a specific form in Bangladesh, but this tug of care is one factor that fundamentally shapes the extent to which women can access employment opportunities and achieve economic empowerment through them. Across continents and decades, the implication remains the same: who cares matters.

How can paid work opportunities be made more accessible for women navigating the tug of war between work and family?

Care That Works

Offering a potential solution to this tug of war between employment and care responsibilities, BRAC is pioneering a model of home-based childcare to serve families in low-income areas. BRAC’s Care Model recruits childcare entrepreneurs, often individuals already providing informal childcare within their close community, and offers them the training and support to operate home-based childcare centres. Entrepreneurs undergo training to enhance their understanding of child safety, development, and play-based learning. They also receive toys, decorations, and necessary resources.

I recently had the opportunity to visit several BRAC home-based childcare centres. We arrived in a residential area of Savar, just outside the Export Processing Zone, a hub of RMG factories. It was lunchtime, and the streets were bustling with garment workers on their break. We navigated around brightly adorned laundry lines strung across winding lanes, peeking into compounds of one-room and two-room houses. In one of these compounds, in one of these houses, we were welcomed into the home and workplace of a khala^[7]. The bed was spread with bright pink toys, and three young children sprawled playing with them. The khala bounced one of the children on her lap as she spoke with us, telling us how she loved working with the children and how the income from the childcare centre supported her own family through a time of financial instability.

Alongside the caregivers, we spent time listening to working mothers who rely on these home-based childcare services. These individuals represent two sides of the rising curve of women’s employment in Bangladesh: women who have negotiated traditional norms of female employment and mobility to take advantage of opportunities for paid employment in the RMG industry, and women who are joining the growing service sector and engaging in home-based work.

As easy as it is to reduce these women to data points on a curious trend curve, listening to their experiences was a crucial reminder of how personal and complex decisions around care and work are. The mothers we spoke to often voiced their desire to work in garment factories to provide a better future for their children. Many mentioned that, without the caregiver’s services, they would not be able to do this work. Childcare decisions were made delicately, with the child’s safety and well-being at the centre. Finding a child carer who was deeply trusted, affordable, and accessible was a central component to women fulfilling both their childcare and employment aspirations.

Dr Goldin’s Nobel prize-winning work highlights the existence of numerous barriers that restrict the economic opportunities that women are afforded. In Bangladesh, the challenges are contextually specific, multiple, and intersecting. However, in a context where unpaid care work remains firmly in the female domain, ensuring that mothers have access to trustworthy and affordable childcare options is one essential step up the U-shaped curve.

References

^[1] For an overview of Dr Claudia Goldin’s work and her Nobel Prize award, see https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2023/press-release/

^[2] “Employment” refers to any work done to produce goods or provide services for pay or profit. This includes work done for wages, as well as self-employment, and unpaid contributions to a family enterprise.

^[3] As the name suggests, “home-based” employment refers to that which is carried out within the home. This concept refers to the location of work and encompasses employment across different occupations and sectors. For example, unpaid work for a family enterprise processing crops at home ready for the market is considered home-based employment. Offering online tutoring from home for hourly wages is also considered home-based employment.

^[4] These tensions faced by female RMG workers are explored in depth in Naila Kabeer’s 2000 book The Power to Choose.

^[5] Based on the analysis by Tonmoy Islam and Kotikula, 2023. https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/872026/adr-vol40no1-4-home-based-work-bangladeshi-women.pdf

^[6] Analysis by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) and UN Women, using data from the Bangladesh Time Use Survey 2021, https://data.unwomen.org/publications/bangladesh-time-use-survey-2021

^[7] Khala is the Bengali term for maternal auntie, used to refer to caregivers.

Kate Brockie is a PhD student at University of Cambridge

On 13 September 2023, the Cyber Security Bill of 2023 was successfully passed in parliament, replacing the Digital Security Act (DSA), which was initially passed on 8 October 2018. The DSA had faced significant criticism for its perceived encroachment on freedom of expression.

The new Cyber Security Bill intends to address some of the shortcomings of the DSA. Notable changes in the new bill include reclassifying certain non-bailable offences under the DSA as bailable, reducing punishments for specific offences, increasing fines, and removing provisions for additional punishment in cases of repeated offences. However, many experts and organizations working on human rights issues opined that the new Cyber Security Bill is akin to repackaging the same old DSA in a new bottle—it does not address any major concerns raised about the DSA—and suggested recommendations for amendment.

The Act, designed to protect digital security, has led to a significant number of cases; over 7,000 lawsuits have been filed under the DSA in Bangladesh since its enactment. Individuals from all walks of life, ranging from children to government employees, have been accused. And from the type of changes introduced, it is apparent that the new act is not going to alter this trend as it does not decriminalize any action that was considered criminal under the DSA.

So, an important question emerges: do the people of Bangladesh truly believe they are free as citizens? Are they comfortable expressing their opinions on social media? A recent nationally representative survey conducted in November–December 2022, with a sample size of 10,218 respondents, offers valuable insights into the sentiments of the Bangladeshi population regarding these questions.

Surprisingly, the survey reveals that a considerable majority (78%) of respondents think themselves free as citizens of Bangladesh. Further examination of the data reveals a more nuanced picture. It becomes apparent that women, more so than men, embrace this belief, with 82% expressing their sense of freedom. Education level also plays a role, as 80% of those with no formal education assert their freedom, while only 72% of graduates hold the same view. Furthermore, income disparities are mirrored in these responses, with 80% of respondents from households earning less than BDT 5,000 affirming their freedom, while the figure drops to 65% among those from households earning between BDT 40,000 and BDT 50,000.

We asked respondents to tell us why they considered themselves free. A large group (45%) think they are free as citizens because they can act as they please. Freedom of movement also seems to be a major determinant of freedom, mentioned by 21% of respondents. Living as a citizen or living in a free country also influences citizens’ sense of freedom, as the survey

Alternatively, respondents who do not consider themselves free think that they lack freedom of movement (13%), freedom of speech (13%), and security (13%). They also talked about not having true voting rights, lack of the rule of law, existing political turmoil, and economic hardship as reasons which violate their sense of freedom as citizens.

What we need to remember is that our survey did not define “freedom.” The respondents used their own understanding to assess whether they were free and responded accordingly. The detailed analysis of the reasons for their beliefs reveals that those who thought they were free gave mostly vague and general concepts of freedom, while those giving a negative response mentioned rather specific aspects of freedom. Thus, it may not be unjustified to assume that many who answered positively may not fully understand what freedom entails for a free citizen.

In the next set of questions, we asked people about their internet usage behaviour and use of social media. About 47% of the total respondents were found to be using the internet, and among them, more than 82% used Facebook and 6% used Twitter.

Those who used either Facebook or Twitter were asked if they felt safe to post/like/share their opinion regarding social issues in the country. The result is somewhat disturbing, as about 63% viewed that it is never or not very often safe to post opinions on social media. When they were asked if they felt safe to post opinions on political issues on social media, an even bleaker scenario emerged. About 73% of the respondents feel that it is never or not often safe to post or share opinions on political issues on Facebook. A mere 12% of respondents feel safe to post their opinions on the subject. These opinions do not vary much across gender, education, and income groups, highlighting the pervasive fear associated with openly discussing political matters.

What takeaways can one generate from these contrasting findings? Though on the surface, people may think of themselves as free citizens, their idea of freedom seems to be rather limited. Thus, the high rate of positive answers regarding the question of freedom as citizens may be a significant overestimation. This is exemplified by other data points: vague definition of freedom by those responding positively, specific definitions (including freedom of speech) among those responding negatively, higher negative response among those with higher education, and the overwhelming fear surrounding freedom of expression on social media.

Finally, the question remains: what is the source of this overwhelming fear? Does this fear come from the execution of the DSA, which often seems to harass citizens? Will the new act be able to alleviate this fear? From the changes that were made, it seems rather unlikely.

Tanvir Ahmed Mozumder is a Research Coordinator at the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD)