Gender equality, social inclusion and empowering women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh

Project

Project status

Completed

Core country

Bangladesh

Project vision

To ensure gender and social inclusion (GESI) were incorporated into a project supporting the transition to net-zero through electric vehicles (EVs) in Bangladesh.

The project was delivered by Ricardo as part of the UK PACT Green Recovery Challenge Fund. A key aim was to support the empowerment of women entrepreneurs in the project’s EV initiatives – ultimately addressing some of the barriers that women entrepreneurs face in Bangladesh.

Activities

Establish a framework for a gender equality and social inclusion (GESI) report of project activities and design a gender-disaggregated matrix for all project reports, documentations and surveys.
Deliver training and enable knowledge sharing for a group of rural and urban women entrepreneurs who already had strong links to micro-credit institutions and had purchased EVs (operated by their husbands) with a partial loan. Training included business plan development, accounts and bookkeeping, access to finance, and digital marketing, and providing continued advice and mentorship.
Provide inputs for scoping and prioritizing delivery and implementation mechanisms for an EV Financing Tool and for linking with technical and business advisory teams in the project to support their EV adoption strategies. This included raising awareness among financial institutions on the challenges of accessing finance for women.

Wider project activities

The project supported micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) with scalable business models with tools and advice to enable the preparation of business cases for EV-based projects. The team also worked with financial institutions to drive the investments that will allow businesses to substantially increase their use of EVs. The project sought to address these challenges whilst prioritising gender equality and social inclusion (GESI) in the transition to an equitable and sustainable net-zero future.