This one-day gathering brought together a small group of researchers and donors to discuss several current debates and challenges in measuring women’s empowerment and to generate a practical set of recommendations on how researchers, practitioners, and donors can improve the ways we measure empowerment using surveys and non-survey instruments.IPA and J-PAL will summarize these recommendations in a series of blog posts, research resources, and apply best practices to their own work.SessionsFrameworks for Defining and Measuring Women’s EmpowermentThis session examined definitions and conceptual frameworks of empowerment across subfields and disciplines, such as development and feminist economics and anthropology.

On May 24-25, 2017, IPA Kenya Country Director Suleiman Asman, Research Manager Peter LeFrancois, and Policy Assistant Kelvin Gichia attended the 2017 Evidence to Action Conference organized by the International Centre for Evaluation & Development (ICED).

The SEEP Network, in collaboration with Forum Partners, hosted the 2017 Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) Global Learning Forum in Bangkok, Thailand from May 23-25. Women’s financial inclusion was a key focus of the WEE Global Learning Forum.As part of the event, the Grameen Foundation invited Innovations for Poverty Action, along with BRAC and CARE, to debate the best way to close the digital financial services gender gap. Bhavani Prathap Kasina, IPA Regional Director, Asia and Latin America, argued that more inclusively designed products are important but must be introduced together with training, customer support, and peer networks to improve digital literacy.