This is a multi-country research programme funded by DfID and housed in BRAC University, Bangladesh, to explore how projects and collective action at the field level in different countries are adding to our global knowledge of how women's empowerment is theorized and implemented. As part of this programme, in 2006 the Collective completed a scoping paper to present research findings on women's paid work and empowerment in Pakistan. In 2006-7 the Collective designed and carried out a qualitative research study to examine the Lady Health Worker Programme. It is intended to enhance our understanding of how a government programme, employing almost one hundred thousand women, is facilitating social change through creating jobs for rural women. The final report of this study will be available in mid-2008. In the next phase of collaboration between the Collective and the Pathways of Women?s Empowerment Research Programme, a qualitative study exploring the effects of micro-finance projects among women in Kabul is underway. Researchers from the Institute of Development Studies (University of Sussex) are conducting this study along with Ayesha Khan of the Collective. The research draws on qualitative interviews with women beneficiaries of two different MFI programmes.