The world is urbanizing at an unprecedented speed and scale, with more than half the global population living in cities today… rising to nearly 7 out of 10 people in cities by 2050.

East Asia Pacific’s (EAP) strong economic performance over the past few decades has significantly benefited and empowered women in the region, bringing better health and education and greater…

Last month, I attended the International Family Planning Conference in Kigali, Rwanda, where policymakers from across the world gathered to strategize about ways to achieve a demographic dividend—…

Growing a business is not easy, and for women firm owners the challenges can be acute, especially when they are poor and run subsistence level firms. In developing countries, 22 percent of women…

© Sarah Farhat/World Bank One of the encouraging signs that I pick up whenever I travel is the difference that technology is making to the lives of millions of marginalized people. In most cases…

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Disasters hit the poorest the hardest. Poor people are not only more vulnerable to climate-related shocks, but they also have fewer resources to prevent, cope with, and adapt to disasters. The…

School girls in Berastagi, North Sumatra, Indonesia. © Axel Drainville via Creative Commons In 1978, we both started our high school education in our home city of Semarang. Our alma mater is…

Also available in: Français What is it like to set up and run an incubator as a woman? The answer, much like anywhere else in the world for working women, is that it’s complicated. In many…

Also available in: Français As we saw in our second blog, [[tweetable]]entrepreneurship plays a critical role in promoting sustainable growth[[/tweetable]]. Yet, in many West-African countries,…