Although microfinance started as a movement to improve women's economic wellbeing through increased female entrepreneurship in particular, its impact on women's attitudes toward and participation in the labour market is not fully understood. We fill this gap by combining data on branch locations...

This article examines the relationship between women's economic and social empowerment in the context of extreme poverty. It is based on the findings of primary fieldwork on the char islands of north-west Bangladesh, investigating the processes resulting from the implementation of the Chars...

This paper investigates how a development intervention which targets extremely poor households with investment capital influences relationships between those households and the landowning elite. It places this investigation in the context of the "agricultural reformation" of rural Bangladesh,...

The social and ecomomic impact of COVID-19 has been deep, wide-ranging, and multidimensional. While anecdotal evidence of distress among the poor, particularly those with informal occupations, has been widespread, effective policy response has required real-time, researched data disaggregated...

In this paper, we examine the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the livelihoods of the poor. We use an unusually rich data set from a 'financial diaries' study known as the Hrishipara Daily Diaries Project. The data set tracks the economic and financial transactions of 60 individuals...

The Bangladesh economy has undergone significant structural changes over the last four decades. The share of agriculture in GDP has declined, while the significance of industry and service sectors has increased. These structural changes have been associated with persistent challenges such as...

This paper describes the very different role played by female elites in contemporary developing countries, as compared to the 'early' industrializing countries of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. It shows that women are far more important in business and politics in today's developing...

Whether policy support should be designed differently for women entrepreneurs is a particularly relevant question. To answer this, and to inform the design of policies to provide appropriate support for women entrepreneurs, the paper compares male and female perceptions of typical...

This paper examines the impact of gender based violence against women and girls (GBV), in the environment the children live in, on school attendance, school achievement, as well as boys' and girls' dropouts. Based on the sixth phase of the Demographic and Health Surveys from 18 sub-Saharan...

This paper sets out to investigate the wellbeing of women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It undertakes spatial and temporal comparisons of women's wellbeing using data from the Demographic and Health Survey and the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey. Using the multidimensional...