Mussarat Farida Begum runs a small teahouse in Garjon Bunia Bazaar, a rural community in Bangladesh. As part of a program which has helped Bangladesh reach more than 2 million low-income rural…

When I heard the news last autumn that 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan had been shot simply for standing up for her right as a girl to get an education, I was horrified. It also reminded…

Photo: Nandita Roy / World Bank"Five years ago, I was no one, " said Kunti Devi to me, sitting up straight against the wall of her one-room mud hut in Bara, a small village in India…

In a new study on gender equality, researchers asked 4, 000 people in 20 countries to describe the gender norms in their communities and the influence those norms have on their lives and their…