Financial inclusion as a pathway to decision-making empowerment and urban resilience among women climate migrants in Khulna City, Bangladesh

Climate-induced migration is an increasingly important challenge in Bangladesh, where recurrent environmental hazards continue to disrupt coastal livelihoods and push vulnerable populations toward urban centers. This study examines financial inclusion, decision-making empowerment, psychosocial stress, and urban resilience among women climate migrants in Khulna City, Bangladesh. Using a mixed-methods design, the study combines survey data from 300 women migrants with qualitative evidence from focus group discussions and key informant interviews. Quantitative data were analyzed through descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, correlation, ANOVA, and ordinary least squares regression. To avoid overextending the construct, empowerment is operationalized specifically as women’s self-reported participation in household decision-making, rather than as a multidimensional empowerment scale. The findings show that women climate migrants remain concentrated in insecure, low-income urban livelihoods marked by high rent burdens, long working hours, and limited economic mobility. Education and occupation did not significantly differentiate income outcomes, indicating that structural constraints in the urban informal economy limit the returns to individual background characteristics. Microfinance participation was positively and significantly associated with decision-making empowerment, suggesting that financial inclusion may expand women’s agency within households. However, the low explanatory power of the regression models and the absence of significant predictors in the stress model indicate that empowerment and psychosocial strain are shaped by wider institutional, relational, and urban livelihood conditions. The study contributes to climate migration debates by showing that resilience among women migrants should be understood not as a direct outcome of relocation or credit access alone, but as a negotiated process shaped by financial access, gendered household relations, informal labor markets, housing insecurity, and social belonging.