Health, education, the labor force participation rate, and political empowerment of women significantly impact the digital financial inclusion of women.
Financial inclusion (FI) for vulnerable populations, such as women, is critical for achieving gender equality, women’s empowerment, and thereby inclusive growth. In this regard, the use of digital financial services is of particular significance for women as it allows them easier access to financial products for business and household needs. For implementing policies to reduce the financial exclusion of women, it is necessary to first measure the extent of FI in a society. While there have been several attempts to measure FI for the general population, there is limited literature on gender-based measurement of FI. We fill this important research gap by developing a gender-based FI index (GFII) focusing particularly on digital services and evaluating the performance of economies across the globe (by considering 109 economies based on data availability) in terms of a gender-based FI measure developed by us. This index has been developed using two separate indices, a digital financial service index (DFI) and a conventional financial service uses index (CFI). One contribution of the paper is to relate the Gender Development Index (GDI) and the Gender Inequality Index (GII) of economies, two well-known measures of inclusive development, with the GFII and the DFI for females (DFIF). This exercise shows that while there is a positive correlation between these two sets of indicators, there are a number of economies that are high (or low) in gender development (or inequality),which need
to improve their digital FI. Interestingly, using the Global Findex database and the Feasible Generalized Least Squares (FGLS) and instrumental variable panel data model, we show that health, education, the labor force participation rate, and political empowerment of women significantly impact the digital financial inclusion of women. We make relevant policy suggestions for improving women’s digital financial access and thereby enhancing gender empowerment for faster and more inclusive growth.
WEOP 2024版权所有。 隐私政策。
欢迎来到CAREC女性赋权在线平台 ,在这里,CAREC成员国的女性可以放心地建立联系,加入社区,互帮互助,最终通向成功 为确保为所有成员和导师创造一个安全、包容和愉快的环境,我们建立了 以下指导原则: