Promoting Women’s Financial Inclusion- a toolkit

Financial inclusion benefits individuals and households, and well-functioning financial systems benefit whole countries. However, access to financial services is highly unequal, with poor people – and particularly poor women – frequently the least served by existing institutions and systems. There is ample evidence of how financial inclusion projects of different types can, if properly designed and implemented, enhance women’s economic empowerment. Financial inclusion projects can therefore help to achieve both gender equity objectives and poverty reduction objectives. As such, in order to promote poverty reduction and gender equity, there is a clear rationale for using development resources to enhance financial inclusion for women. This toolkit offers a practical guide to developing and monitoring financial services to enhance women’s financial inclusion as one tool for the economic empowerment of women. A financial inclusion programme may not be targeted specifically at women. For example, it may have broad poverty reduction goals that benefit men as well as women. To make sure women benefit as much as possible from the programme, it is important to understand why financial exclusion for women is different from financial exclusion for men.