Blog Archives

Being serious about WEE requires funders to be serious about transparency

By Alex Farley- Kiwanuka and Sally Paxton | Jan 13, 2023 | Blog

The political support for investing in women’s economic empowerment (WEE) has never been higher. Especially in light of the disparate impacts from COVID-19 on women and girls, there has been a loud chorus of voices on the need to invest in WEE. The critical question, though, is whether the political rhetoric is matched by effective, catalytic investments that are significantly advancing women and girls’ equality and giving them the meaningful ability to participate in, and benefit from, economic opportunities and prosperity?

How do we monitor the impact of funding to advance women’s economic empowerment?

By Chelsie Loveder and Dorcas Mutheu | Dec 15, 2022 | Blog

To mark the launch of our report Improving Funding Transparency for Women’s Economic Empowerment, this blog examines why the publication of results data is vital to understand impact and advance gender equality.

An approach for mapping funding for women’s empowerment collectives

By Dorcas Mutheu | Dec 7, 2022 | Blog

Following our recent research tracking funding for women’s empowerment collectives (WECs) in Kenya, Nigeria and Bangladesh, this blog focuses on women’s groups with WECs elements. Dorcas Mutheu discusses what our research tells us about how these groups are funded and how reporting can be improved for better tracking of funding and impact.

The biggest challenge for the 2X Challenge? The urgent need for transparency

By Gary Forster | Dec 5, 2022 | Blog

The 2X Challenge has mobilised $11.4bn for women. But what do we know about these investments and how they’re advancing gender equality? Our team has looked back through the data to see how successful the 2X approach has been so far in channelling funds to women and girls. We found a transparency problem – and we’re calling for it to be fixed as part of the certification process.

Your step by step guide to researching funding for women’s economic empowerment and women’s financial inclusion

By Alex Farley- Kiwanuka and Sally Paxton | Nov 2, 2022 | Blog, News

We’ve produced two new guides for anyone wishing to track international funding for women’s economic empowerment (WEE) or women’s financial inclusion (WFI) in their own country. The guides are based on an approach we’ve developed and tested over the last two years, which is designed so that it can be used and adapted by decision makers, researchers and advocates for their own purposes – including holding funders accountable or advocating for different investments. The new step by step guides are concise, accessible and flexible – signposting to a range of other, more detailed resources.

Introducing our new research program to track USAID funding to local organizations

By Sally Paxton | Oct 10, 2022 | Blog

In November 2021, US Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Samantha Power threw down a challenge for her organisation: by 2025, 25% of USAID’s funding would go to local organisations. The details of how to measure this important metric, however, remains an open question. Given our experience with open data sources, we decided to try to develop a replicable methodology using available data that USAID already publishes. In this blog, Sally Paxton summarises what our exploratory analysis has shown, and how our new methodology can help to track progress towards locally led development.