A woman in charge of her economic future is a woman with power over her own life. If we can ensure women and girls have tangible control over their futures and wellbeing— that they no longer earn less money, have less power, or make fewer gains—we can help create a world where women, girls, men, and boys all have a chance to thrive.
When women and girls can participate as equals in the economy, it creates something greater for everyone.
We created this website to share the research and analyses that underpin our work on advancing women’s economic empowerment. We invite you to explore these pages and learn more. For more on the foundation’s Gender Equality team, click here.
In developing its inaugural gender equality strategy, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation conducted a two-year investigation exploring what works to increase women’s economic empowerment. Through this research, we arrived at a framework for understanding how places can progress towards greater economic empowerment for women.
This site sets out our framework and the research behind it to provide a window into our thinking and a public resource for the field. We created this site as a snapshot of the state of knowledge at the time we launched our strategy, with high hopes that the strength and depth of evidence will continue to improve in the years ahead.
We identified 13 elements that are critical components for increasing women’s economic empowerment, ranging from education to financial inclusion.
We explored how large-scale progress on women’s economic empowerment has been achieved by detailing the change that occurred in five different countries.