women’s empowerment

April 30, 2018

IamBRAC: Money, guns and thugs in Bangladesh

Nazma manages four offices, supervises dozens of people, grants loans, raises a daughter and occasionally rolls up her sleeves to lock horns with gun-wielding thugs.
March 7, 2018

A letter from Sir Fazle for International Women’s Day

There is one thing we need to understand clearly: patriarchy is an enemy to both men and women. Men need to be saved from patriarchy just as much as women. If we are able to defeat patriarchy, both women and men will gain.
December 17, 2017

Social enterprises: More than women-friendly spaces

When women have more access to financial as well as physical assets, it provides them with a base of authority that is important in staking her claim for equal or fair treatment.
August 11, 2017

Four lessons from a rising star in local governance

Rina Halim is in a rush today. Her husband is outside, waiting to take her to Dhaka. There she will be receiving the Mother Teresa Award for her social service, and for being an outstanding councilor.
July 20, 2017

The superhero in a sari who’s giving every child a better chance

It is a weekday afternoon in Moulvibazar, Rangpur, and the melody of children chanting times tables is wafting through the trees. School is over, but students are gathered under shady trees in the village courtyards for another round of lessons.
July 12, 2016

Ending early marriage in Bangladesh and Uganda

The practice of child marriage adversely affects the lives of millions of girls in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. In Uganda, nearly one in every two girls is married before reaching their 18th birthday. The situation is worse in Bangladesh where two out of every three women aged between 20 and 24 marry young.
April 20, 2016

How do we empower the next generation of girls? With girls.

When Sa’a jumped from the moving truck, she wasn’t thinking about her education that had just been cut short. She was fleeing for her life.
March 13, 2016

Girls in BRAC Uganda’s girl clubs 72% more likely to be earning

Jazirah Namukose, 18, left school feeling the sting of rejection. Classmates discriminated against her because of her disability- a clubfoot. But her life changed when she started going to the Kikaaya girls’ club in northern Kampala, Uganda. She gained skills and the confidence to start her own business- and found friends who didn’t treat her differently because of her disability.
March 10, 2016

How do we get more women into workplaces?

Women in the workplace make sense. According to the World Economic Forum, companies with a strong track record of gender diversity are 15 per cent more likely to have higher earnings than their peers. The Fortune 500 companies with the highest representation of women on their boards significantly outperform the others.
March 8, 2016
The skilled girl effect

The skilled girl effect: Worth more than the US and Chinese economies put together

An hour away in the rural town of Tongi, Mahmuda Akhter, 16, sits in a mobile phone servicing shop in the main market. A stressed looking customer rushes in with his phone. Holding a small screwdriver, Mahmuda pries open the cover of his mobile and diagnoses the problem.
February 4, 2016

Can extreme poverty be subdued before 2030?

Poverty is opportunity. Sure, one can take a kaleidoscopic peek into the word's denotation, but poverty instigates and propels action intended for positive change. Today, around 700 million people are thought to live in extreme poverty, defined as surviving on less than USD 1.90 a day. In 1990, that statistic was more than 1.9 billion.
December 21, 2015

Does your organisation actually empower women?

“Data not only measures progress, it inspires it. What gets measured gets done. Once you start measuring problems, people are more inclined to take action to fix them because nobody wants to end up at the bottom of a list of rankings.”