Recent Blogs
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5 Challenges for Women’s Financial Inclusion
From restrictive cultural norms to less access to technology, women around the world face unique challenges in gaining access to formal financial services.Blog
Can Financial Inclusion Change Gender Norms?
What does women's economic empowerment look like? Increasingly, researchers and practitioners are focusing on two parallel approaches: Alleviating the symptoms of social and gender norms to enhance access to finance, and potentially changing prevailing gender norms themselves.Blog
Women’s Financial Inclusion: A Down Payment on Achieving the SDGs
Ensuring that women have access to formal financial services can help to address many of the economic gaps between men and women worldwide. World Bank Group's Gender Strategy puts women’s economic empowerment—and the financial services necessary to achieve it—high on the agenda.Blog
Pakistan’s Gender Gap in Financial Inclusion
Pakistan has the second worst gender gap in the world, an imbalance reflected in the country’s financial inclusion numbers. What are the specific causes of women's financial exclusion, and what are potential solutions?Blog
Revitalizing the Self-Help Group Movement in India
Growth of the self-help group movement in India has slowed in the past five years. How can challenges be overcome to improve and revitalize these programs?Blog
Gender & Geography: Women-Owned SMEs in the Middle East
Women entrepreneurs in the Middle East face greater challenges than men in trying to access financial services. Providing women-owned SMEs with specific types of support will work to promote inclusive economic growth in the region.Blog
Can Smartphones Help the Poorest Escape Extreme Poverty?
Trickle Up is piloting a project integrating smartphones into Graduation programs in India, affording a valuable opportunity to explore the potential role of technology in improving and scaling the delivery of the Graduation approach to ultrapoor women in remote areas.Blog
What Do We Mean When We Talk About Empowerment?
What do we mean when we say a woman is empowered? How can progress toward empowerment be measured?Blog
Enhancing Financial Inclusion for Women in Nigeria
Even though Nigeria has a higher level of financial inclusion than Sub-Saharan Africa across three of five indicators, the gender gap in Nigeria is higher. What can be done to lower the barriers to female financial inclusion?Blog
Catalyzing Women’s Financial Inclusion: The Role of Data
For governments, the collection of sex-disaggregated data begins a virtuous cycle, where its availability informs stronger, evidence-based policymaking and helps regulators evaluate the effectiveness of policies intended to promote financial inclusion.Blog
Policy into Practice: Zambia Advances Women’s Financial Inclusion
What can stakeholders do to facilitate women’s access to finance? How can they ensure that women can participate in the economy without facing constraints and barriers limiting their success?Blog
5 Ways Digital Payments can Bring Women into the Economy
When women are locked out of the formal economy, development suffers and growth stagnates. Wiping out gender discrimination in financial access is not easy, but certainly incorporating more digital tools can help bridge the gap between men and women.Blog
What Excludes Women from Formal Finance in the Arab States?
Women are less than half as likely as men to have an account in the Arab world. Why such a dismal record?Blog
Why Women Self-Help Group Members Make for Good Bank Agents
Pilot projects that train women self-help group members as bank agents in rural areas in India are proving to be promising.Blog
Banking on Change: Enabling Women’s Access to Financial Services
Women face barriers in proving their identity, traveling to a bank, opening an account, and building a credit score that all contribute to the gender gap in access to financial services.Blog
How Hard Is It to Use Mobile Money as a Rural Bangladeshi Woman?
Women in Bangladesh have one of the lowest rates of mobile money usage in the world. Does the dearth of usage indicate a lack of appropriate products and services? Just how hard is it to use mobile money if you are a rural Bangladeshi woman?Blog
False Neutrality: Ensuring Policies and Regulations Benefit Women
It's possible that financial regulations can be crafted in ways to increase and improve the quality of financial inclusion for women.Blog
Mind the Gap: Women and Access to Finance
The Global Findex reveals a glaring gap between women and men when it comes to financial access. With all of the global progress, why would a gender gap persist?Blog
Lessons on Customer Empowerment from Women in Rural India
CGAP is seeking to answer questions and test ideas that explore the concept of empowerment and the role it can play in building customer trust and confidence.Blog