CIPE40 Podcast: Advancing Women’s Economic Empowerment in Bangladesh — A Conversation with BWCCI Founder Selima Ahmad

Thank you so much. For everyone listening, we are going to talk about politics a little bit. We are going to ask Selima about the election and what the latest news is out of Bangladesh. But before we get to that, Selima, I’d love for you to share the story of how and why you created the Women’s Chamber of Commerce, how you came across CIPE, and how you, with CIPE’s help, built BWCCI into what it is today.

I had just resigned from the [inaudible], which is the Federation of Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI), which is a platform for the business community. I was the only woman elected to the Board of Directors, and I had just finished my term. In 2000, during my second term, I ran for the same post [on the Board of Directors]. It was then that I noticed nothing meaningful was happening. The trade body was not actually bringing women into entrepreneurship and there were no women leaders. I did not find that the [FBCCI] was functioning the way that it should, so I resigned. Later, I was in Delhi at a conference for South Asian women entrepreneurs organized by CIPE. While there I met [inaudible] from the Sri Lanken Chamber of Commerce. As we were discussing how they build engagement with women entrepreneurs and advance women’s leadership [inaudible], someone suggested, ‘Why don’t you form a women’s business organization?’ And I thought, ‘Yes! We should do it.’ I asked the Sri Lanken Chamber to send me all their documents on how they went about it. When I returned to Bangladesh I met with women entrepreneurs and everyone was so happy, because at that time women entrepreneurs were really in a crisis. They were starting businesses, but they didn’t know what to do once they’d started. Sometimes they’d just have a showroom, sometimes not even that. Most of these women were homemakers [before starting businesses] and didn’t have a roadmap for business. I remember seeing their products and wondering how they managed to maintain this quality with such ignorance of the business world. So, I went to the Minister of Commerce and met with the DTO, the Director of Trade Organization, and explained the type of organization that I intended to form. They told me, ‘No’ because there is no provision for a women’s Chamber of Commerce. There’s nowhere in Bangladesh where you can do this. So, I went to the commerce minister directly, and he also said, ‘no, no, there is no way.’ And then I went to the Secretary of the Minister, and of course, he was reluctant. So, every day for seven months, I went to the ministry trying to lobby. Every day.

Eventually, I went to the commerce minister, and I said, ‘You know, whenever I met with the prime minister, she always said to me, “Why are you the only woman? Where are the other women entrepreneurs?”’ Then I said, ‘In Bangladesh, we have women in government, we have women in the prime ministry, why can’t we have a women’s Chamber of Commerce?’ I even referenced our constitution because the constitution in Bangladesh says that men and women are equal, and there is even a line where it says that anything which can bring benefits for women, the government must deliver. So, I said, ‘Tell me how a women’s Chamber of Commerce would be a bad thing for women entrepreneurs? In what way would it not be a benefit?’ I’m a recognized woman entrepreneur, I’m a business leader already, so one day I just called him, and I said all that. It was June 19. I remember because at that time hartals were happening, hartals are ‘strikes.’ The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Awami strikes were happening, the election was on the doorstep.

Yes. So, my husband asked, ‘How are you going to get there?’ Well, I rented an ambulance because the distance from my home village to Dhaka is quite far. Then, I went to the ministry. I remember people looking at me when I arrived, probably wondering, ‘Is there a patient in there? Who is that?’ So, I entered. They gave me a special notification that you cannot trade licenses. The notification was for the Women’s Chamber, but they didn’t give us the name ‘Bangladesh Women’s Chamber of Commerce,’ they gave us the name, ‘Bangladesh Women’s Chamber of Business and Industry.’ That was because when they first told me that the Women’s Chamber cannot happen, I said, ‘alright, well we’ll call it “Women’s Chamber of Business and Industry.”’ Because my aim was to form this organization, it didn’t matter what the name was, I just wanted to have a legal entity. [Inaudible] After that, when the hartal was over, I had a press conference declaring the formation of this chamber of commerce and in it I said, ‘commerce and industry.’ In response, there was an article written in the newspaper saying, ‘there cannot be a women’s chamber of commerce and industry.’ That journey took seven years. And every year we must renew [the license]. Two years in, there was another obstacle: I went to the chamber, and I said, ‘there was a mistake, all the other businesses are licensed as ‘chambers of commerce’, but the women’s organization’s license just reads ‘women’s business and industry.’ We need to rectify this.” And at that point all minister’s said, ‘yeah, yeah, of course.’ And they rectified it. After that we became the Bangladesh Women’s Chamber of Commerce. That took seven years. I remember another conversation that came up where I got very agitated. [Inaudible] By that time we’d started working with CIPE, our work was visible, ministers were participating, and so I asked, ‘Why have you still not given us permission?’ There was a new secretary of ministry by then and I said, ‘Call the law ministry and find out if there is actually a law against this.’ So now the law ministry was coming. I remember all these secretaries and joint secretaries from the ministries of commerce and the ministry of law sitting around this big table. I had brought with me all these documents of all our activities, and I said to them, ‘I challenge you to show me another chamber that has achieved this much.’ Because at that time there were [inaudible] mainstream chamber of commerce; including district chambers, the Dhaka chamber, etc. and they looked at all these documents and they were so surprised. The law minister also said, ‘they can have a chamber of commerce.’ We got the approval for a TOO license, which falls under the Trade Organization Ordinance Act. Having a TOO license means you can become a member of FBCCI. It’s part of the process; you get a TOO license, you become a member of the FBCCI, then you’re a full member of the whole business community, of the trade entity. When we went to the FBCCI, the FBCCI said, ‘no, we can’t [give you a TOO license] – it’s illegal.’ I said, ‘the government says all chambers of commerce are eligible for a TOO license and legally you must give it to us.’ So, what did they do? They filed a case against us, along with some other chambers of commerce. [Inaudible] I had to be there in court, and I remember thinking, ‘What am I doing here? What was my crime? Forming a chamber of commerce?’ I was so tense because if the court declared it illegal, that was it for us, we’re gone. The highest verdict comes from the court. Our lawyer, she was a human rights activist, she specialized in women’s rights and gender equality, theory of all the gender equality, but she didn’t have that much experience dealing with commercial law, so I was [inaudible] to help her with that side of things. I remember the judge well – I ran into him [after the court case was resolved] at a wedding and he told me how surprised he was by how much [inaudible] I was giving to my lawyer. I explained that it was because when the other lawyer was speaking, my lawyer wasn’t able to give the right information. [Inaudible] Ultimately, we won. However, FBCCI still wouldn’t license us, and they filed another case. It was a huge issue.

I think so. And I remember, I went to them and said, ‘I don’t want you to make this organization Selima’s organization.’ I wanted to keep my office separate from the BWCCI. They often have the chamber of commerce offices running out of the presidents’ offices, but I said I didn’t want that. I need to have an office dedicated to BWCCI. One of the gender specialists was always telling me that I need to focus on advocacy, advocating for the development of Bangladeshi women entrepreneurs. At that time, I said, ‘What is advocacy?’ And at that time CIPE was working with the Dhaka Chamber of Commerce, and when I went there, I found that a lot of the issues they are working on with CIPE were advocacy related. So, in 2005, when I was in New York attending the Beijing + 5 at the UN, I decided to take a detour to Washington to meet with CIPE. I met [inaudible], who I’d first met in Dhaka. Before I met with him, I spoke with my friend and mentor about what sort of advocacy and action we needed and they explained that it might be trade licensing, seed money, bank access, whatever the women entrepreneurs bring up in the meetings. Three main things always came up: capacity building, access to banks, and, because microfinance was popular, a pathway for growth. So, I wrote a few short talking points, and I came to CIPE’s office and dropped them off with [man’s name]. Later I had a conversation with CIPE, Andrew was the regional director at the time.

I’ve always been really proud of the BWCCI journey. Because as I said, our mentor, CIPE, was always guiding us. When we formed the chamber, CIPE said, ‘now you must do advocacy.’ They said, ‘Selima, you’re doing policy advocacy but why don’t you look into advocating around a Women’s

National Business Agenda (WNBA)?’ And I said, ‘What is this – WNBA?’ I’d never heard of it. So, CIPE came to guide us and to teach us how to build a WNBA and advocate around that. When we started with CIPE, you know, focus group discussions, finding out their issues, finding out their problems, sharing what they wanted to achieve. So, when the women’s national business agenda issue came up, CIPE sent us an expert to teach us, to guide us. And we learned. Andrew also came when we were building the WNBA, and he helped us figure out how we’d like to negotiate – he guided us…That guidance was always there. Once we had a women’s national business agenda, we consulted with 1800 women entrepreneurs all over Bangladesh. [Inaudible] …180 NGOs who are doing women’s economic empowerment were also included. So, it was a very enriching dialogue and discussion. Then we had to figure out what will be the actual agenda and you know, there are so, so many agendas; someone is saying, ‘access to finance,’ ‘access to literacy,’ someone is saying, ‘training, social barriers,’ all sorts of things, ‘design,’ ‘development.’ About 40 or 50 different issues came up. So, Andrew said, ‘find out three or four main ones for the agenda…what do you actually have to do?’ And, you know, I learned from CIPE, this
democracy thing, giving equal opportunity. This is a choice, and I have always given equal opportunity and choice to all my members. although I am a president, although I am a founder, I have never done anything without giving them their choice, without giving them an opportunity to say that BWCCI needs that, or BWCCI should do this. That’s the key to
democracy, and I learned that from CIPE. In Ukraine, in Kyiv, there was a movement for democracy and CIPE took me there. I spoke there, even though I didn’t know much about democracy. So, this is some of the direct and indirect influence I’ve had with CIPE. Getting into what we have done through WNBA, we ultimately decided, along with the Bangladeshi women entrepreneurs, that social barriers should be first on the agenda. And I as I said when I was talking to you about equal opportunity, and choice, and democracy, I was in a very democratic way, I sat down with the leaders and I said, ‘you have to debate, you cannot leave the room until you’ve identified number one, number two, number three.” Because there were like three or four different groups saying they wanted this and
that as the number one or this to be number two, so I said, ‘you fight, discuss, but you can’t leave unhappy, you all must ultimately agree what’s right. So, if you want an issue to be number one on the agenda you make sure that everyone understands why you want it to be that way.’ Finally, the women entrepreneurs identified social barriers as their number one. And I said, ‘why social barriers when you are aways asking for access to finance access to winners, access to [inaudible] why not make these number one?’ And they said, ‘even if we get access to finance, if we don’t have gender equality in the marketplace, in the house, and with my husband, you know, if there’s domestic violence, and if I have no choice in how I do business, then I cannot proceed.’ So, the first was social business. And then second, capacity building. I said, ‘what about your access to finance?’ And they said, ‘if I don’t have the capacity to run my business, what am I going to do with a bank loan?’ So, second was capacity building, and third was access to finance. After identifying these three things in WNBA, we had a huge conference, and we had a theme song which was [inaudible] …and we sang that song. We had the finance minister, we had home minister, and we had the Bangladesh bank governor. These are the three areas, access to finance, Bangladesh bank governor, and the social barriers is the home minister, and for capacity building, the minister of finance.

I would like to have a peaceful election and the participation of all parties, with no barriers to entry, nobody stopping others from participating. From our party, we are getting guidance to go to the voters, encourage participation, go door to door, ask for their vote. So, we are preparing.
For me, as a member of parliament, I know that I have to go out and meet my people, and ask for their vote, and talk to them about the good things we’ve accomplished while in government so far and all the things we want to do, which we haven’t been able to do yet. So that’s how I’m going about it as a member of parliament. Of course, there are still other parties that are creating issues. Peaceful politics is very important. The Ukraine-Russia war has caused commodity prices in Bangladesh and all over the world to increase. And if there are hartals, or strikes, with commodity prices so high already, the movement of commodities will decrease. Ultimately, who is going to suffer because of that? It’s the people. So, for me, participation

This has been a conversation with Ms. Selima Ahmad, a member of parliament, founder and longtime Chair of the Bangladesh Women’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and a champion of the rights of women and girls in Bangladesh, more generally. This has been a special series celebrating CIPEs 40th anniversary. Again, Selima, thank you so much for joining us. And we look forward to talking to you soon.