BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD) convened a two-day hybrid international convening titled “Making Digital Finance Work for Women.” The conference took place on June 21-22, 2023 at BRAC Centre in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
The event had two hundred and twenty attendees, including international guests from Kenya, India, the United States, Canada and the UK.
The conference featured two engaging panel discussions, five thought-provoking academic sessions, and three keynote presentations. Esteemed researchers and practitioners including Michael Carter of the University of California, Davis; Timothy Ogden of the Financial Access Initiative at NYU-Wagner; Erica Field of Duke University; and Munshi Sulaiman of BIGD presented research findings on how digitalization of microfinance and wages in both formal and informal sectors can empower women economically. They also identified some of the key barriers to and opportunities for women’s use of digital financial services (DFS).
Key takeaways from the conference include the following: 1) traditional paths to scale will not reach the digitally excluded; 2) DFS are not traditionally designed for women, so women experience challenges their male counterparts do not; 3) if we want to improve digital financial equality, we need to improve women’s digital onboarding experience and offer choices in terms of how they pay for transactions; 4) and we need to be nuanced about how we conceptualize and design interventions for different groups of women. For example, we need to develop DFS that work specifically for women with disabilities.
A highlight of the event was the small group addas, in which intimate groups of ten conference attendees engaged in rich discussion on topics including the gender-informed design of digital microfinance and inclusion in DFS.
BIGD also organized a poster presentation exhibition featuring the work of a broad array of researchers, implementers, and policymakers in the field of DFS and women’s economic empowerment. Jonathan Fu, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Zurich, received the top poster award for his work titled “The benefits (and limits) of digital financial capability training: Evidence from Cambodian payroll accounts.”
The event concluded with a panel discussion including Anir Chowdhury of Aspire to Innovate (a2i); Lila Rashid, formerly of Bangladesh Bank; Issam Mosaddeq of the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office; Seth Garz of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Imran Matin, the executive director of BIGD, moderated the event.