Financial Inclusion, Women, and Building Back Better
Financial inclusion occurs when adults have access to appropriate, affordable, and well-regulated financial services to meet their needs effectively and improve their lives. Financial inclusion is a growing global phenomenon. Since 2011, more than...
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| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2021
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/545241624880584363/Financial-Inclusion-Women-and-Building-Back-Better http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35870 |
| Summary: | Financial inclusion occurs when adults
have access to appropriate, affordable, and well-regulated
financial services to meet their needs effectively and
improve their lives. Financial inclusion is a growing global
phenomenon. Since 2011, more than one billion adults have
opened an account at a financial institution, such as a bank
or a mobile money provider. Despite the progress, however,
women continue to lag behind men. In low- and middle-income
economies, men are 9 percentage points more likely than
women to have an account, a gender gap that has stubbornly
persisted. And there is considerably variation among
countries. Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments
across the world are providing relief payments and financial
support to citizens and businesses. If such transfers could
be transacted digitally, this might help unbanked people,
especially women, obtain accounts for the first time.
Digital government payments are a proven way to boost
women’s financial inclusion. Globally, roughly 140 million
people, of which 80 million are women, opened their first
accounts to receive digital government payments, such as
safety net subsidies, public pension funds, or public sector
wage payments, according to the Global Findex (Demirguc-Kunt
and others 2018). Government COVID-19 relief and recovery
payments create opportunities to rectify the gender gap in
financial inclusion, mitigate the pandemic’s economic
fallout and build resilience against future emergencies. In
addition, the momentum brought on by the policy responses to
the pandemic offers opportunities to tackle long-standing
challenges to financial inclusion. This note outlines
critical priority areas toward this goal. |
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