Excerpts of an interview with Banan Massoud ElSayed, Head of Monitoring and Evaluation at Education Above All Foundation
Every year on March 8, International Women’s Day is marked by panels, pledges, purple logos, and powerful statements about equality. Visibility matters. Advocacy matters. But women do not achieve empowerment through symbolism alone. Real empowerment is built through economic security, agency, and the ability to make informed decisions about one’s own life.
In 2026, the global conversation around women’s empowerment must move decisively from celebration to substance, from what we say about women to what we actually do to help them stand firmly on their own two feet. Empowerment must be measured not only by representation, but by whether women have access to the tools, resources, and opportunities needed to build self-sustaining livelihoods.
For millions of women across South and Southeast Asia, and the wider Global South, ambition has never been in short supply. What has consistently been missing is access: access to finance, to digital services, to information, and to inclusive systems that recognise women as capable economic actors rather than passive beneficiaries.
Through our digital financial inclusion programme spread across India, Cambodia and Sri Lanka, we have seen first-hand that when these barriers are removed, the impact extends far beyond individual women. Families become more secure. Communities grow more resilient. Local economies become more dynamic and inclusive. We learnt that digital financial inclusion is not simply a technical solution; it is a pathway to dignity and self-reliance. For women navigating informal work, unpaid care responsibilities, and fragile income streams, access to fair and responsible financial services can be the difference between survival and stability.
Across Cambodia, India, and Sri Lanka, the Education Above All Foundation and Gojo-led Pasio project demonstrates what is possible when financial systems are designed around women’s realities rather than forcing them to adapt to rigid systems. These initiatives combine mobile access to entrepreneurial knowledge, flexible credit, alternative methods for assessing creditworthiness, and community-driven learning spaces. Together, they create an enabling environment where women can participate in the economy in their own terms.
And the results are compelling. The intervention reached out to 99,573 beneficiaries with 98.5 percent of these being young women aged 18-35 years old. In these countries, several groups of women were given access to fair, flexible financial tools, ensuring they are not just consumers but also investors in their own growth. This led women to develop businesses, create jobs, stabilise household income, and reinvest in education and health. The project proved that financial inclusion, when done right, multiplies impact far beyond the individual borrower. And most importantly, behind this data are real women, making real choices. Across the three countries 98.3 percent of beneficiaries reported increased business income as a direct result of their loan, with 96.8 percent saying the programme improved their confidence as entrepreneurs. One in five participants (20.3 percent) created new jobs for other young people aged 18–35, a multiplier effect that extends the programme’s reach far beyond the original borrower. The findings proved that there was a need to address a genuine and widespread financial access constraint, and once that was done, success was inevitable.
For instance, in Sri Lanka, a home-based baker turned a handful of daily cake orders into a growing business after securing a loan and a digital community that helped her reach customers far beyond her village. In India, a woman running a modest grocery shop expanded her inventory, increased her income, and built confidence after joining a women-focused lending group supported by digital learning and peer networks.
In Cambodia, a farmer used a loan to invest in her crops, increase productivity, and contribute more securely to her family’s income. These experiences are reflected in the data: across the three countries, 50 percent of participants used their loans to start entirely new businesses, while a further 21 percent used them to stabilise existing businesses during periods of hardship cementing the role that accessible capital plays not just in growth, but in economic survival
These stories also highlight a critical principle of women’s empowerment: choice. Not every woman seeks to build a large enterprise. Some prioritise income stability, others flexibility, savings, or risk reduction. True financial inclusion respects these diverse goals and avoids models that push women into unsustainable debt or dependency. Strong outcomes were achieved regardless of which element participants prioritized. Strategic expansion was observed where 20 percent of beneficiaries invested in equipment, inventory, or other expansion activities. These businesses transitioned from survival mode to growth orientation, using capital to increase capacity and reach.
This is why responsible finance is central to lasting empowerment. Transparent pricing, appropriately sized financial products, and ongoing financial literacy are not optional features; they are essential safeguards. When women understand their options and are supported to grow at their own pace, economic empowerment becomes sustainable, dignified, and transformative. The data bears this out with 92.7 percent of project beneficiaries reporting making better financial decisions for their business as a result of the programme which is a capability gain that outlasts any single loan cycle.
What we have seen through our work is that true empowerment means trusting women with capital. It means designing financial products that understand irregular incomes and unpaid care burdens, and offering digital tools that are usable, not intimidating. It also means pairing finance with knowledge, so that women are not just borrowers but also decision-makers.
There is also a broader lesson here for development and philanthropy. Too often, women are positioned as beneficiaries rather than partners. What women need are tools and trust, and that is how they can become innovators, employers, and community anchors. The ripple effects, which include job creation, increased household resilience, and stronger local markets, extend far beyond the original target group. Women’s economic empowerment should not just be a ‘women’s issue’, it should transition to becoming an economic strategy.
As the world continues to recover from overlapping crises, women’s financial inclusion is one of the most effective ways to build resilience from the ground up. It is faster than infrastructure, more durable than short-term assistance, and transforms lives more meaningfully than rhetoric.
Equality is not achieved solely through advocacy. It is achieved when women are economically empowered, financially included, and supported in building self-sustaining futures for themselves, their families, and their communities.
(The Digital Financial Inclusion for Youth Economic Empowerment project was implemented by Gojo Inc. with support from the Education Above All Foundation’s Silatech programme. The data mentioned in the piece is drawn from the Pasio Programme Survey Report 2025 (Gojo & Company Inc., November 2025), based on 744 completed surveys across India, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia at a 95% confidence level)
