July 16, 2018

Female Financiers

27 minutes

Can financial markets transform women's lives? Kim Chakanetsa unites two financiers from Nigeria and Bangladesh who are trying to increase wealth for women in very different ways.

Durreen Shahnaz was one of the first Bangladeshi women on Wall Street, and later founded Singapore-based Impact Investment Exchange (IIX) through which she set up the world's first social stock exchange. She recently launched a Women's Livelihood Bond, which will impact the lives of over 385,000 women across Southeast Asia. Durreen says she was advised along the way to change the name of the bond so it didn't include the word 'women'. She refused, poured her last savings into it, and was elated when it became over-subscribed.

When Arunma Oteh was head of Nigeria's Securities and Exchange Commission she took many powerful men to task over corruption and fraud, and faced a gendered backlash. She says people didn't like that the new Sheriff in town was a woman, but the public came to respect her results. Arunma is now Vice-President and Treasurer at the World Bank, where she convinces the private sector to invest in emerging economies. She says women are the real new emerging market, and if they earned as much as men, $160 trillion could be added to global wealth.

(L) Arunma Oteh (credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for RFK Human Rights)

(R) Durreen Shahnaz (credit: TED)

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By BBC World Service

4.5