Pathways of Women’s Empowerment is a DFID-funded research and communications programme that will link with academics, activists and practitioners to find out what works to enhance women’s empowerment. We want to identify where women are achieving real gains and discover the positive and negative factors that have influenced their journey. Our aim is to make these pathways of change visible and to build on them to inspire a radical shift in policy and practice. By involving policy actors and practitioners directly in our research and learning, we hope our work will be in itself a catalyst for change.

The program brings together five research institutions located in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, South Asia and the UK, and the international agency for women UNIFEM. Based at BRAC University in Dhaka, Bangladesh, the South Asia hub of Pathways of Women’s Empowerment will work closely with partners in Afghanistan and Pakistan and convene regional lesson learning with partners elsewhere in South Asia, including India. The core objective is to understand what enables women to empower themselves and sustain changes in gendered power relations. The research concentrates on three themes – voice, work, and bodily integrity – to determine the processes and conditions that allow women to challenge inequality and identify and make visible previously unobserved processes of change in each country. The research will also map out the social changes and transformations that have gone into the make up of the 21st century women in South Asia.

Learn more about Pathways of Women’s Empowerment.

Learn more about the South Asia hub of Pathways of Women’s Empowerment.