How do we improve the transparency of funding to women’s economic empowerment? How do we monitor the impact of funding on advancing gender equality? For the past two years Publish What You Fund, through our Women’s Economic Empowerment project, has developed and piloted a new approach to track funding to women’s economic empowerment (WEE), women’s financial inclusion, women’s empowerment collectives, and to assess funders’ gender integration. We have published country reports outlining new, granular insights into which aspects of WEE received funding in Kenya, Nigeria, and Bangladesh.

In this roundtable event we are pleased to launch our new Improving funding transparency for women’s economic empowerment report. Our presentation synthesises our work from the last two years, extrapolating findings from across the three focus countries to unpack the current state of transparency in funding for women’s economic empowerment. We identify the key data limitations, including our ability to understand the impact of funding, and provide recommendations for funders to improve the reporting and publication of information to these areas. The roundtable, which took place on 15 December 2022, provided an opportunity for specialists in the field to give feedback on our findings and discuss future actions.