Bangladesh’s Women Entrepreneurs Association has entered a new leadership term with a promise to take more business support to women outside the country’s established entrepreneurial centres.
Yasmeen Ahmed, proprietor of Herald Traders and an entrepreneur in the leather and footwear industry, has been elected president of the Women Entrepreneurs Association for the 2026–28 term.
Her priorities include strengthening professional networks, supporting younger entrepreneurs, expanding skills and capacity-building programmes, and improving the visibility of women-led businesses.
One particularly important commitment is geographic expansion.
WEA says it wants to reach women in rural communities, district towns and smaller cities rather than concentrating entrepreneurial support primarily in Dhaka and other major centres.
That matters because Bangladesh’s entrepreneurship gap is partly an access gap.
A woman may have a viable product or service but lack information about registration, financing, packaging, digital marketing, taxation or wholesale buyers. Professional networks can provide knowledge and introductions that more established entrepreneurs often take for granted.
Women can face additional barriers around collateral, property ownership, mobility and family expectations.
Business associations cannot solve all of these structural problems, but they can help women move from isolated microbusinesses toward stronger commercial networks.
WEA’s newly elected committee includes Senior Vice-President Nilufar Siddiqa, Vice-President Aniza Chowdhury, General Secretary Mahjabeen Akhter Nazia and several other women entrepreneurs and professionals. The association was founded by pioneering Bangladeshi entrepreneur Rokia Afzal Rahman.
The next challenge will be turning institutional commitments into measurable outcomes.
How many women gain new market connections? How many move from informal selling to registered businesses? How many access finance or expand employment? And how many young founders outside Dhaka can enter networks previously unavailable to them?
Those are the numbers that ultimately matter.
Women’s entrepreneurship in Bangladesh is not short of ambition. What many founders need is the ecosystem around that ambition—capital, skills, markets and people willing to open doors.
Source credit: The Business Standard, 17 August 2026; WEA election held earlier and new leadership announced for the 2026–28 term.
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