Banking on Women: Finance and Beyond
A Joint Conference by Women for Women International UK, J-PAL and the EBRD
EBRD HQ, London, Friday June 3rd 2011
The one-day conference brought together leading researchers, financial institutions, and NGOs to discuss the practical implications of recent experimental research on women and economic development. Policy interventions such as microfinance and training programmes often have surprising impacts on women's ability to participate in economic life and to contribute to economic development. Recent cutting-edge research has started to uncover the exact nature and magnitude of these impacts. In concise and to-the-point presentations a number of economists presented recent findings on 'what works' for women in emerging markets.
Practitioners, policy makers, and bankers discussed these findings and evaluated their ability to contribute to effective development policies as well as sound business propositions for private firms. Among other things, topics discussed included the (in)ability of microcredit to change women's lives and the need for additional, complementary services such as savings and training programmes and how political institutions and infrastructure investments can improve women’s bargaining power in the household or wider community.
You can download the presentation slides of the conference here:
- Opening: Brita Fernandez Schmidt — Download PDF
- Session 1: 'Beyond Microcredit'
- Discussant: Seida Saric, Women for Women Country Director Bosnia and Herzegovina — Download PDF
- When is capital enough to get female microenterprises growing?’ by Chris Woodruff, University of Warwick — Download PDF
- ‘Savings Constraints and Microenterprise Development: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Kenya’ by Jonathan Robinson, UC Santa Cruz — Download PDF
- 'Group Lending or Individual Lending? Evidence from a Randomised Field Experiment in Mongolia’ by Ralph De Haas, EBRD — Download PDF
- Keynote Session:
- Gender Equality and Economic Development by Esther Duflo, Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT, co-founder and co-director of J-PAL — Download PDF
- Session 2: ‘Investing for Growth: The Impact of Women’s Decision Making’
- ‘Happiness on Tap: Piped Water Adoption in Urban Morocco’ by Florencia Devoto, Paris School of Economics — Download PDF
- ‘Economic Empowerment of Female Adolescents in Uganda and Tanzania’ by Selim Gulesci, London School of Economics — Download PDF
- 'Women as Policymakers’ by Esther Duflo, MIT — Download Presentation
- Panel Discussion: ‘From cutting edge research to practical implementation’
- Claudia Pendred, Director Romania and Chair of the Gender Steering Committee, EBRD — Download PDF
Download the Programme of the conference here.
Listen to the Conference:
A joint conference by Women for Women International UK, J-PAL and the EBRD.
