In 2015, the leaders of 193 nations made a pledge through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end gender inequality in all forms by 2030, highlighting that for the first time, gender equality was a priority for the world’s leaders. Additionally, in response to longstanding patterns of abuse and discrimination, women around the world have raised their voices and have brought attention to inequalities like never before. It’s clear that gender inequality runs deeper than many of us understood, does more damage than we admitted, and needs to be urgently addressed.

We know that there is no silver bullet to solving gender inequality. But when we look at developing countries that are making significant progress in empowering women and girls, we see that harnessing economic power is a consistent and tangible thread.

Economic empowerment has material benefits in its own right. From 2008 to 2014, for example, the number of female-headed households living in extreme poverty fell by 2 percent because of access to the mobile money product M-PESA.(2) But economic empowerment also has powerful spillover effects. With greater economic access and control, women can attain more years of education; they can choose when and whether to marry and have children; and they drive social, economic, and health benefits for themselves and the next generation of girls.

In Bangladesh, for example, decades-long growth in the garment industry brought many women into the formal workforce, leading to declines in child marriage and early motherhood. These effects show that it is about more than economics; it is about changing the way society views women and girls, and indeed, how women and girls see their own role in society.

A woman in charge of her economic future is a woman with power over her own life. If the world can unleash that power for 3 billion women and girls, we will begin to untangle some of the most persistent roots of poverty.

(2) “The long-run poverty and gender impacts of mobile money,” Tavneet Suri and William Jack, 2016

While our gender equality strategy is new, we did not start from scratch. This strategy builds on the important work of our partners and our shared efforts to close the gender data gap, support women’s movements, and learn about what works to put women and girls at the center of development. The findings and lessons learned from these investments have illuminated the best approach for the foundation’s path forward.

Gender is – and has always been – at the heart of our foundation’s work, from maternal and child health to hunger to family planning. In addition to looking at the role of gender across all our program areas, we have developed an overarching strategy that articulates how we will systematically tackle the barriers that women and girls face simply because of their gender.

The focus of our gender equality strategy is on transforming the way the poorest women and girls participate in economies. Our initial investments are in projects that drive women’s inclusion in digital financial services, enhance women’s participation in agricultural markets, and support a new wave of self-help groups that can provide critical platforms to empower the next generation of women and girls.

Additionally, together with our partners, we have developed an empowerment model that can help governments, organizations, and individuals design programs that tackle gender equality and address some of the biggest hurdles facing women and girls.

We analyzed evidence and data from nearly 100 countries around the world to understand the many factors that drive women’s economic gains. From there, we looked at where the foundation is best positioned to make a difference—based on where philanthropic investments in general can have the most impact, where we in particular had the right experience, and where a strategy like ours could be bold and take risks that others might not be able to take.

In the end, we identified three priority areas for our work:

• Financial Inclusion: Ensuring women have more access to and use of digital financial services, such as mobile bank accounts and digital payment systems, to close the persistent gender gap in financial inclusion.
• Support and connection: Prioritizing self-help groups as critical platforms for bringing women together and building up their collective knowledge, economic power, and voice.
• Opportunity: Connecting women to new market opportunities to increase their profits and incomes, especially in the agricultural sector.

The foundation will also engage in a modest learning agenda to better understand how owning assets, such as land, could help increase and diversify a woman’s opportunity to own an income.

Our initial investments are focused in four countries that are already making gains or where we see great potential for impact: India, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. The lessons we learn with our partners in these countries will inform wider programming and partnerships that benefit other women and girls across Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.