Showing Our Work: New Website Shares the Evidence Behind Our Strategy on Women’s Economic Empowerment

Just over a year ago, I had the pleasure of announcing that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was launching its first-ever gender equality strategy. The development of this strategy was the result of years of research and analysis to determine where the foundation’s resources would be best placed in addressing gender inequality around the world. In digging into the available evidence, we realized that a trend emerged: When a woman has control over her economic future, it is one of the most profound ways she can exercise power over her own life — which shaped the focus of our strategy on women’s economic empowerment.

We also realized that, far too often, when strategies are developed by foundations or multilateral agencies, the research that informs that strategy sits on a shelf or is buried behind complex search queries, never to see the light of day again, unless someone has the time to go digging.

We want to change this.

That’s why I am so pleased to make this research and analysis available as a resource for anyone working to untangle the root causes of poverty and gender inequality and to better understand the fundamental drivers of women’s economic empowerment.

We created the Equal is Greater website to share our global framework — the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s perspective on what the world can do to advance women’s economic empowerment, and the supporting evidence and analysis behind it. So that you can read it, consider it, build on it, carry it forward, and not have to reinvent it. Because we know that the more resources we collectively can access in our ongoing march toward gender equality, the more powerful we can be together in this journey

Mapping our Research and Analysis

The site highlights research and evidence compiled with respect to what works to increase women’s economic empowerment. This research led us to a framework for understanding how different parts of the world have progressed toward greater economic empowerment for women and what can be done about it.

While we hope you dig in and find this resource valuable, it is important to note that this website does not contain an exhaustive list of all evidence on women’s economic empowerment, but rather a snapshot of the state of knowledge at the time we conducted this research, between 2016–2017. On the site, you will find:

-Thirteen elements that are strongly correlated with progress on women’s economic empowerment based on a correlation analysis across 95 countries.

-Broad-based enablers that can spark and accelerate progress in a community or a society across these enablers.

-Case studies on the links between women’s economic participation and gender-equitable progress, such as how reforms in Ethiopia have guaranteed equal rights for women in marriage and divorce, asset ownership, and the workplace.

-Our view on how these all feed into transformative progress for the world’s -poorest women and girls.

Our gender equality strategy

Improving the lives of women and girls has always been at the heart of the Gates Foundation’s work, and in 2018 we solidified our commitment to ending inequalities faced by women and girls by announcing our gender equality strategy. We’re focusing on transforming the way women participate in economies, because when women and girls can make economic decisions, like how much money to save, they gain greater control over their own lives.

We’re focused on boosting empowerment in three main ways:

1. Enhancing women’s empowerment collectives to help women amplify their voices and knowledge;

2. Expanding women’s access to digital financial services; and

3. Helping women farmers gain a foothold in markets, increase their earnings, and ensure control over what they make.

We are supporting this work by continuing to invest in integrating a “gender lens” across the foundation to ensure gender is addressed throughout all of the issues we work on, and in building data and evidence that help close the data gap in what we measure and know of women’s and girls’ lives.

While the above areas are where we have chosen to focus our investments, throughout the Equal is Greater website, you’ll find our perspective on women’s economic empowerment that goes beyond these areas and provides a fuller picture of the evidence on women’s economic empowerment and our theory of change that led us to focus on the areas above.

Advancing the cause

It’s my hope that this website will be a valuable resource to all who share our passion and commitment towards tackling inequality and removing the barriers to economic power that women and girls face. With stronger global commitment to gender equality than ever before, let’s capitalize on our collective knowledge and drive even greater transformative change for women and girls around the world.