Call for Proposals: Regional Integration, Trade and Women's Economic Empowerment in South Asia

The World Bank’s South Asia Region Gender Innovation Lab (SAR GIL) promotes evidence-based solutions to reduce gender gaps and advance women’s economic empowerment (WEE) across South Asian countries. This call for proposals is launched under SAR GIL’s Women’s Economic Empowerment in South Asia (WEESA) Community of Practice, a virtual platform dedicated to systematic learning, knowledge exchange and networking to facilitate regional cooperation, dialogue, and capacity building on WEE in the South Asian Region.

WEESA is supported by the South Asia Regional Trade Facilitation Program (SARTFP). The program seeks to enhance trade and economic opportunities for people living in the Eastern Corridor of South Asia (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, and Nepal) with a focus on the economic empowerment of women through greater cross-border trade and commerce, support to micro- and small entrepreneurs, and the inclusive development of infrastructure that connect local communities to regional markets.

Innovation Fellowship Program

WEESA’s Innovation Fellowship Program promotes research and collaboration on Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) in South Asia. Under this call for proposals, we welcome submissions on topics at the intersection of regional integration, trade, and gender equality.

Broad thematic focus areas include:

• Effects of regional integration on women’s economic empowerment (e.g., through trade, tourism, road, rail or inland waterway infrastructure, migration, or information, communications, and technology).
• How to promote women entrepreneurs’ access to regional and global value chains, capital, and links to domestic and regional markets.
• The role of migration in shaping gender roles, attitudes, and intra-household dynamics.
• Risks of regional integration for women and girls (e.g., exposure to gender-based violence or other economic and social drivers of gender inequality and exclusion).

Successful proposals will either use data from multiple countries in the region, or focus specifically on Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and/or Nepal. The research is expected to be original and rigorous. New research ideas that are possible to complete within the specified timeframe are welcome to apply. Ongoing research projects that are already in progress and well-aligned to the thematic focus of this call are also eligible to apply for additional research support offered as part of this call. Researcher author(s) must ensure that the proposed research does not already exist and is substantively different from existing work.

To maximize impact from the research, author(s) of the most innovative and informative papers will be invited to present their work and research findings at a webinar hosted by SAR GIL’s WEESA platform.

Interested applicants should submit their proposals via email to sargenderlab@worldbank.org with copy to jsethi1@worldbank.org by October 4, 2022 at 5:00 PM Eastern Time. Please include the title “Submission: Innovation Fellowship Program” in the email subject line.

Proposal guidelines

The proposal must include the following information. Submissions should be made in .doc, .docx or .pdf file formats, using this proposal template:

• Team composition: Team member name(s), institutional affiliation and contact details.
• Motivation: A description of the knowledge gaps the research project seeks to address and how it contributes to the existing literature.
• Relevance: An explanation of how the problem is relevant to trade, regional integration, and gender.
• Research objectives: Research questions and hypotheses to be addressed.
• Methodology: Methodology describing the datasets to be used in the analysis (if any) and analytic approach (e.g., econometric techniques).
• Workplan and timeline: A brief timeline of activities, interim milestones and deliverables, along with breakdown of total days for every activity for each team member.

Research Support

Each accepted proposal will be eligible for research support in the form of remuneration for 40-80 days of effort. The number of days of research support offered will be determined by the analysis plan and team composition. Compensation will be provided according to the World Bank’s remuneration guidelines for short-term consultants based on World Bank country fee scales.

Please email any queries or questions to sargenderlab@worldbank.org by September 19, 2022.

• Researchers must be based in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, or the Maldives.
• The proposed research may be cross-country in scope but must include a focus on at least one of the four focus countries i.e., Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, or Nepal.  
• Ongoing research projects that are already in progress and well-aligned to the thematic focus of this call are eligible to apply for additional research support offered as part of this call.
• Research plans should be realistic (i.e., able to meet the project objectives within the time frame) and the meet the expected timeline of deliverables (see proposal template).
• Preference will be given to researchers who collaborate with peers in other countries in the South Asia region and submit a joint proposal.
• Female researchers are especially encouraged to apply. In case of applications with multiple collaborators a gender-balanced team composition is desirable.  
• Only complete proposals will be considered for evaluation.

The researcher(s) of the shortlisted proposal(s) will be notified by Friday October 19, 2022. Shortlisted proposals will be invited for a call to discuss the proposal in detail.

Following proposal selection and submission of final report, the most informative and innovative projects will be given the opportunity to present their research at webinars hosted by SAR GIL’s WEESA platform.