View the webinar deck here
Financial inclusion is necessary for economic growth and lowering rates of poverty. Research suggests that financial inclusion can be transformative for women and their families. However, despite increased access to Digital Financial Services (DFS), persistent divides still exist. This growing body of work still leaves the causal pathways between DFS and Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) understudied. To help identify and fill these research gaps, the newly launched WEE-DiFine Initiative seeks to fund research to generate a comprehensive body of evidence around the impact of DFS on WEE.
The second session titled “Women’s Economic Empowerment and Digital Finance (WEE-DiFine)“, hosted by BIGD included Imran Matin, BIGD; Munshi Sulaiman, BRAC International; Naureen Khan, BIGD; and Khandker Wahedur Rahman, BIGD as speakers. The speakers elaborated on the purpose and objectives of the WEE-DiFine initiative, briefly explored the pathways linking WEE and DFS, and highlighted the priority questions to be addressed by research funded by the initiative. Furthermore, the speakers also discussed the first round of RFPs for the initiative and outlined the proposal submission process, as well as answered questions from the audience.
WEE-DiFine Initiative, launched by BIGD, accepted proposals to fund rigorous research projects exploring the causal impact of digital financial services on Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) across five main categories: large-scale greenfield evaluations; extensions to existing studies; measurement experiments; qualitative methods as extensions to full scale RCT studies; and pilot studies.
