In preparation for the Fourth World Conference on Women which was held in Beijing in September 1995, UNRISD initiated an Occasional Paper Series reflecting work carried out under the UNRISD/UNDP project, Technical Co-operation and Women's Lives: Integrating Gender into Development Policy. In...

The collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh in April, 2013 resulting in the death and injury of more than 2000 workers from the country's export garment industry was one of the worst industrial disasters in recorded history. The tragedy galvanized a range of stakeholders to take action...

This paper is intended to show the strengths, weaknesses and potential complementarities of different methodological approaches to impact assessment. It reports on the approach and findings reported by a randomized control trial of BRAC's Targeting the Ultra-Poor programme, directed towards...

Data on female labour force participation in Bangladesh suggest that, despite the increase in female-intensive employment opportunities through microfinance, export garment manufacturing, and community-based services, the majority of working women are concentrated in home-based activities. There...

Based on primary data from India, this paper analyses the reasons underlying women's low labour force participation. In developing countries, women engaged in unpaid economic work in family enterprises are often not counted as workers. Women are involved in expenditure-saving activities, i.e....

This paper examines national-level explanations for poverty decline in Bangladesh in micro-level detail, in order to better understand the nature of the causalities at work and why some households have gained, while others have failed to gain, in the processes of change involved. The analysis is...