Publication database

The Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) launched the Advancing Women’s Empowerment Fund (AWEF) in 2019 with support from the Visa Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The overall goal of AWEF-funded projects is to address the gender financing gap for women-owned small and growing businesses (SGBs) in developing economies. The first round of grantmaking, AWEF Asia, funded eight entrepreneur support organizations (ESOs) in Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, the Philippines, Pakistan, and India, as well as programs serving the region as a whole. This report summarizes the lessons learned from these grants.

Through in-depth conversations with 21 successful women social entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia, this report looks at the varying pathways to success, success factors and challenges that are specific to them, and outlines recommendations for business development services to better respond to the needs of women leading early-stage social enterprises in the region. The report also includes profiles of successful women social entrepreneurs in the region.

This research report uses country level data and expert interviews to understand the critical gender gaps and entrepreneurial solutions to advance the lives of women in Southeast Asia. The study outlines a framework that captures economic empowerment, personal safety and mobility, formal representation, education, health, time and decision-making as seven mutually reinforcing dimensions that are critical to women’s empowerment in Southeast Asia. The report shows that while many development indicators demonstrate that the lives of women in Asia have drastically improved, endemic problems continue to keep them from fulfilling their potential.

In 2015, ADB engaged Inclusive Business Sweden to prepare this sector study on IB models in the value chain of the textile and clothing industry in Asia, focusing on Bangladesh and Myanmar. The study—Project InTaCt (Inclusive Textiles and Clothing)—focused on mapping opportunities for developing IB models across supply chains in Asia as possible new and innovative investment opportunities for leading Swedish and other international and local companies in the sector.

Community-based health insurance has been associated with increased hospitalisation in low-income settings, but with limited analysis of the illnesses for which claims are submitted. A review of claims submitted to VimoSEWA, an inpatient insurance scheme in Gujarat, India, found that fever, diarrhoea and hysterectomy, the latter at a mean age of 37 years, were the leading reasons for claims by adult women. The paper compared the morbidity, outpatient treatment-seeking and hospitalisation patterns of VimoSEWA-insured women with uninsured women.

Examines gender-related inequality in access to collateral and to credit.