Increasing Women’s Economic Opportunities

  The Asia Foundation and the U.S. Department of State’s Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues are pleased to announce a virtual reflection session that will provide an overview of a recent regional convening—the Bali Care Economy Dialogue—that took place in November 2022 to leverage global momentum around transforming the care economy w… Read more

The Asia Foundation is collaborating with AT&T and Visa to launch the Accelerate program, an initiative that will help 6,000 women-led micro, small and medium-sized (MSMEs) enterprises in rural and remote communities gain practical skills to sustain and grow their business. In Malaysia, this initiative is fully endorsed and supported by the Min… Read more

18:30-20:00 (JST) The Asia Foundation Japan presents this webinar co-hosted by Shizenkan University. The presentations will highlight the recent report Barely Staying Afloat: The Impact of COVID-19 on MSMEs in Southeast Asia. It explores the impact of early Covid-19 lockdowns on micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in Southeast Asia…. Read more

The Asia Foundation Mongolia established the first satellite branch of its Women’s Business Center (WBC) in Arvaikheer, Uvurkhangai aimag with support from the Government of Canada through Global Affairs Canada, the Australian Government, and the private philanthropy group the Lotus Circle. The WBC supports current and aspiring women entrepreneurs… Read more

Networks, both formal and informal, play a pivotal role in helping girls and women enter and succeed in STEM fields. They do this by facilitating peer support, role models, mentorship and sponsorship, opportunities for technical and soft skills development, knowledge exchange and collaboration, visibility, and more. This Asia Foundation report show… Read more

The Asia Foundation and Zendesk are partnering on a new social impact initiative to track and sustain women’s leadership networks in East and Southeast Asia in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The pandemic threatens to widen already serious gaps in women’s participation in the labor force and STEM fields specifically; a foc… Read more

The Asia Foundation’s Women’s Economic Empowerment project supports women’s organizations to work on a range of economic empowerment issues, while building capacity, and multi-stakeholder coalitions to pursue changes that create an enabling environment for women to participate fully in Mongolia’s economy.

On September 25th, The Asia Foundation launched a four-year Women’s Economic Empowerment Project in Mongolia funded by Global Affairs Canada. The launch event was attended by a range of leaders active in Mongolia’s gender equality movement. Those gathered represented Mongolian civil society, government, the private sector, international organizatio… Read more

This pilot study seeks to understand the role of India’s growing platform-based gig economy on women’s employment and working conditions. It presents an in-depth study of women’s work through the lens of India’s leading platform companies, and aims to understand the emerging forms of labor practices and the impact of platform engagement on workers’… Read more

Mongolia has been a Covid-19 success story, but the early lockdown that kept the virus at bay has also battered the economy, and no one has felt it more than Mongolia’s small businesswomen.

On the eve of International Women’s Day, Indian women are still too often excluded from the formal economy. But they’re finding a place in the gig economy, thanks to a raft of tech start-ups that have given them new freedom, flexibility, and economic dignity.

Michelle Obama came to December’s Grassroots Leaders Roundtable in Vietnam to deliver an urgent message: some of the world’s best minds are going undeveloped because of our failure to educate girls.

Shiseido Asia Pacific and The Asia Foundation have successfully concluded the inaugural Girls Learning & Leading (GLL) program, a scholarship program empowering marginalized young women at a critical time when many drop out of school to find paying jobs. The first cohort of 102 female scholars in Cambodia completed the eight-month program with… Read more

It is now widely accepted that women’s labor market participation improves their relative economic position, and from a broader perspective also stimulates the efficiency and development potential of the economy. However, traditional gender norms and patriarchal values often restrict women’s mobility and constrain their activities in the labor mark… Read more

Women’s entrepreneurship is a top regional concern in Asia, where women own more than half of the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in some countries. Even where women are starting businesses at relatively high rates, however, their profits and growth are constrained relative to their male counterparts. In Cambodia, for example, less than 1… Read more

The Asia Foundation today announced its selection on Moody’s Corporation’s inaugural list of partners for Reshape Tomorrow™, an innovative, global program to help owners of small and growing businesses overcome the challenges of expanding their enterprises. The selected Asia Foundation program, “Accelerate Women’s Entrepreneurship: Supportin… Read more

Today, The Asia Foundation and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) released a new publication, Emerging Lessons on Women’s Entrepreneurship in Asia and the Pacific: Case Studies from the Asian Development Bank and The Asia Foundation. The joint undertaking explores the most pressing challenges women entrepreneurs face in the region and includes compel… Read more

9:30 am – 11:00 am Choate Room, 1st Floor, 1779 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036 Women’s entrepreneurship is increasingly understood to be a key driver of economic growth and job creation: an estimated $4.5 trillion could be added to Asia and the Pacific’s GDP by 2025 by closing the gender disparities in economic opportunities. Widely rec… Read more

Earlier this year, the G7 launched the Gender Equality Advisory Council to promote the integration of gender equality and gender-based analysis across all G7 activities and outcomes. As part of Canada’s presidency of the G7 during 2018, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, “Gender equality must play a key role in creating lasting solutions to the ch… Read more

In Myanmar, there is a general attitude that issues affecting women fall exclusively under the purview of the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief, and Resettlement. This policy paper explores how gender mainstreaming in subnational governance can take place outside of what is typically considered women-centric policy domains in Myanmar, using the fi… Read more

The 2018 Chatham House International Policy Forum convened last week at a time of international angst. Two British cabinet ministers had resigned over Brexit negotiations, creating more uncertainty around the tenure of Prime Minister May. President Trump’s contentious meeting with NATO officials sparked questions about the U.S. commitment to that i… Read more

The Women’s Business Center Incubator Project (WBC Project) addresses a critical demand from women entrepreneurs to receive day-to-day professional and high-quality business support and development. The Center provides services in an enabling environment that fosters women’s entrepreneurship and supports small and medium businesses.services cover a… Read more

For many Mongolians, the booming capital, Ulaanbaatar, is synonymous with economic opportunity and a new life. Half the population now lives in the capital, most of them in the so-called ger areas, unplanned districts often lacking essential infrastructure like water and electricity and isolated from commercial activity. Starting a business here an… Read more

Today, The Asia Foundation joined eight partner organizations for a day-long tweet chat focusing on different aspects of women’s economic empowerment. The robust discussion was in preparation for the upcoming Women’s Economic Empowerment Global Learning Forum on May 23-25 in Bangkok. The Forum, hosted by The SEEP Network and in collaboration with F… Read more

At first glance, Mongolia appears to be a shining star globally in the realm of women’s empowerment, and in many ways, it is. For example, according to the UN’s Gender Development Index (GDI), women in Mongolia have a longer life expectancy than men (70.2 compared to 63.1), and outnumber men in school attendance across all ages. Women can be seen i… Read more