13 Sep.

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Women-Centered Design: Making Financial Products and Services Work for Women

Author: Marina Dimova - Womens World Banking
Although nearly 250 million women in developing countries finally have some form of access to financial services, 742 million women – three times that many! – still have no access at all. To put this staggering number into perspective, if these women made up a country, it would be the 3rd largest country in the world. Furthermore, there are an additional 246 million women with inactive bank accounts, underscoring the fact that access to financial services does not always equate to usage. These last 742 million women are the most difficult to reach for several reasons: they are typically located in rural areas with no connectivity or access to mobile phones and constitute the least educated and poorest demographic in their respective regions.
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29 Sep.

0

Coming Forward: The Role of Mobile Money Agents in Driving Women’s Financial Inclusion

Author: Bobbi Gray - Piyush Singh
Around the world, women do between two to ten times more care work than men, with countries like Ghana and India on the extreme end. Time poverty and caretaking responsibilities are indicated as particular barriers that constrain women’s economic participation. Female entrepreneurs interviewed by Grameen Foundation in Northern Ghana note that household chores are “time consuming, making our business less productive” and the nature of household chores “makes it difficult to [take] up certain businesses,” limiting both when women can work, as well as the types of businesses in which women can participate. Sociocultural gender roles that expect women to address the caretaking and household workload increase economic inequality amongst men and women. These constraints to economic participation limit women’s financial inclusion as well, for the very same reasons.
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