After the screening of the literature, a total of 67 articles were documented individually and classified as barrier related studies, experimental studies and studies evaluating interventions with a few studies covering more than one aspect.
Due to high level of heterogeneity of quantitative data, we could not conduct a meta-analysis, so instead we have summarized studies based on their characteristics, factors, mediations and results (Bohren et al. 2015). In the Table 2 below, we have classified and connected the 67 eligible articles based on their contribution to developing different perspectives about barriers and interventions in FI based women empowerment.
Table 2
Dimensions and themes of FI and women empowerment in the selected articles.
DIMENSION | SUB DIMENSION | STUDIES (N = 67) |
BARRIERS | Patriarchy structures | Kabeer, N., & Sweetman, C. 2015; Ghosh and Günther 2018; Manta 2019; Roy 2015 |
Psychological | Koellinger et al. 2008; Lombe et al. 2012; Patil and Kokate 2017; Kavita and Suman 2019; Manta 2019 |
Low Income/ wages | Marie et al. 2017; Gonzales et al. 2020; Ghosh and Vinod 2017 |
Low Financial Literacy | Klassen and Lamanna 2009; Gonzales et al. 2015; Kumari and Azam 2019; Montanari and Bergh 2019; Manta 2019; Kavita and Suman 2019; Kaur and Kapuria 2020; Doss et al. 2020; Ingale and Paluri 2020 |
Low Financial Accessibilty | Bernasek 2003; Klasen and Lamanna 2009; Soumaré et al. 2016; Brudevold et al. 2017; Manta 2019; Kemp and Berkovitch 2020; Mueller et al. 2020; Demirgüç-Kunt et al. 2008 |
Ethinicity | Kaur and Kapuria 2020; Gonzales et al. 2020 |
EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES | Social Interventions | Cho et al. 2013; Ibarraran et al. 2012; Maitra and Mani 2017; Field et al. 2015; Kim et al. 2007 |
Economic Interventions | Dupas and Robinsion 2013; Dupas et al. 2014; Schaner 2017; Squires 2018; Lall et al. 2017; Gonzales et al. 2020; Prina 2015; Roy 2015 |
Social and Economic Interventions | Adoho et al. 2014; Alzua et al. 2016; Bandiera et al. 2015; Stark et al. 2018; Honorati 2015;Valdivia 2015; Chakravarty et al. 2016; Diaz and Rosas 2016; Brudevold et al. 2017; Buehren et al. 2015 |
INTERVENTION TYPES | Government/ Corporates programs and policies | Swamy 2014; Montanari and Bergh 2019; Gülsoy and Ustabaş 2019; Kaur and Kapuria 2020; Gonzales et al. 2020 |
Microcredit/ Microfinance | Swamy 2014; Laha and Kuri 2014; Zhang and Posso 2017; Johnson 2013; Gonzales et al. 2020; Khandker and Samad 2014; Buehren et al. 2015; Karlan et al. 2007; Kim 2007; Lall et al. 2017 |
Formal account / services | Schaner 2017; Dupas and Robinsion 2013; Dupas et al. 2014; Prina 2015 |
Cash/asset transfer program | Roy et al. 2015; Brudevold et al. 2017; Buller et al. 2018; Ismayilova et al. 2018; Squires 2018 |
Self-Help Groups (SHG), Philanthropy, NGOs | Nagaraj and Sundaram 2017; Hendriks 2019; Kemp and Berkovitch 2020; Kabeer 2011; Maclean 2012; Ramachandar and Pelto 2009; Mehta et al. 2011; Tiwari et al. 2019; Deininger and Liu 2013 |
Digital Inclusion | Klapper and Singer 2017; Klapper and Dutt 2015; Suri and Jack 2016; Ouma et al. 2017; Efobi et al. 2018; Humbani and Wiese 2018; Natile S. 2019; Arnold and Gammage 2019; Tiwari et al. 2019 |
The ideas forwarded through the above classification in the studies of FI and WE have been knit to arrive at a thematic discussion about barriers, intervention based studies and intervention types which are the three main dimensions of our study.
Barriers to Financial Empowerment of Women
Women have been suppressed and exploited physically, socially, mentally and economically since a long time. Developing countries particularly have a patriarchal set up where women are seen second to men (Nagindrappa and Radhika 2013). While there is a section of society that encourages women empowerment, numerous barriers continue to restrict their advances.
Through our set of identified studies we have presented below a discussion about various barriers which have been found through the discussion to be interlinked and often cyclical in nature. Figure 2 below highlights the scope of our further discussion about the barriers in the way of FI of women.
Patriarchy structures
Patriarchy is a socio-ideological concept in which men in the family (father, brother, husband, son etc.) are considered to be superior to women. It is also described as – a social arrangement in which men (patriarchs) dominate, oppress and exploit women (Walby 1989).
Delving into the subject of patriarchy, noted author, Naila Kabeer, 2015 pointed to two types of inequities against women. First, a gender mediated social class-based violence, rape and other sexual exploitation that women get subject to and second, domestic violence due to scarcity or poverty and related helplessness of male within the household.
Abuse of women doesn’t stem out only of scarcity or poverty, even the affluent families exploit their daughters by denying them their land and property rights. Indian government introduced a gender –progressive inheritance law to combat this injustice, despite the reforms, parents continued to deprive their daughters of their rights based on emotions and compensation in the form of higher education and higher dowries (Roy et al. 2015). This ill treatment of woman which starts from her parental abode continues in her husband’s house where the ordered unequal power relations developed out of patriarchy further diminish her position. Her production, reproduction and sexuality get controlled by men. This biased treatment of women in the household adversely affects all levels of her social interactions depriving her access to resources, opportunities (Manta A. 2019; Ghosh and Günther 2018) and financial independence (Schaner 2017).
Psychological factors
For obvious reasons as discussed under the previous heading, many a time’s women lose self-confidence, self–esteem and perceive opportunities with fear of failure (Koellinger et al.,(2008)). An experimental study found that the females in the lower income group tend to be more risk averse than their male counterparts and think about the negative consequences of not being able to pay back loans. (Manta A. 2019) Thus, psychological factors must be carefully studied as crucial drivers to FI of women (Kavita and Suman, 2019).
It was found that Investment pattern, group experience and age impacted women's perception about barriers to FI (Lombe et al. 2012) and attitude could be explained by personality traits, ability to cope-up, resource utilization, entrepreneurial abilities, organizational control, financial Inclusion and economic betterment (Patil and Kokate 2017).
Low Income/ wages
Though the concepts of income inequality and gender have been discussed separately in literature, yet they cannot be compartmentalized as they keep interacting by the way of inequality in outcomes and opportunities which are a bye-product of inequalities mainly in education, financial access, social structures and individual perspectives.
With the biasness of patriarchy and her own fallen self-esteem, a woman’s negotiation and bargaining power suffers leading her to enter into the social contracts where she is able to earn low level of income and wages compared to men for the same work. This discrimination is popularly referred as “glass ceiling” and is experienced by women at all levels of hierarchy. This reminds of the much discussed US presidential elections in 2016 where former U.S. Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was subject to misogynistic attacks indicating to her being too weak to serve the nation’s highest office.(Marie et al. 2017). Hence, woman being exploited at work in terms of work treatment and low wages is no exception. At lower level of education and power, gendered wage gaps are even more pronounced (Gonzales et al. 2020) and are found to further contribute to the financial exclusion (Ghosh and Vinod 2017) and further impede the economic growth of women.
Low Financial Literacy
With cyclical interconnections with all other barriers to financial empowerment of women, Financial literacy has been much discussed by researchers. Hung , A. et al, 2009 combined all previous definitions of Financial Literacy to express it as “knowledge of basic economic and financial concepts, as well as the ability to use that knowledge and other financial skills to manage financial resources effectively for a lifetime of financial well-being.” Successive studies have recognized Financial awareness, Financial knowledge, Financial skills, Financial attitude and Financial behavior as key factors to determine financial literacy (Kumari and Azam 2019)
Financial literacy has been supported as one of the critical factors to bring about FI and has greater importance for increasing economic empowerment among women especially the rural poor (Gonzales et al. 2015; Montanari and Bergh 2019; Kumari and Azam 2019; Kaur and Kapuria 2020) who in the lack of it make wrong choices and become vulnerable to high financial risks (Manta 2019). With lack of financial knowledge and skills, women cannot access financial services and the benefits of formal financial system making them economically dependent on men and confined to the vicious circle of low investments, low income and low profits. (Manta 2019). Montanari and Bergh, 2019 found that participation of women in earnings and decision-making activities of rural cooperatives was almost non- existent. It insisted that women's role in such institutions was restricted to low-cost or free physical labor, while the ones who benefited were literate and generally educated people.
Spatial diversity and related factors play an important role in effective communication of financial literacy. Gendered gaps in education were found greatly related with the general variation in educational achievement across countries signifying shortage of access to education. (Gonzales et al. 2015).
A cross regional comparison showed high level gendered discrimination based on education level and economic participation in South Asia. Observations in Asian countries indicate lessening of gendered employment gap with the rise in gendered education levels while in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) gender gaps in education have reduced, yet women have not got opportunities in employment (Klassen and Lamanna 2009). This hints to the presence of interwoven barriers which are passed on locally.
Overall, a high level of Financial literacy is expected to result in greater economic participation of women where she gets an opportunity to express her thoughts and receive suggestions about investment avenues and updates about new profitable products and services encouraging her towards group effort and informed financial behavior (Ingale and Paluri 2020)which in turn improve her relative wealth (Doss et al. 2020) and empower her.
Low Financial Accessibility
Access to bank accounts, savings instruments, and other financial amenities may result in women’s better control on their earnings, personal consumption and commercial expenditure (Bernasek 2003) and lack of it pushes her back to obscurity. This was exemplified in an experimental study in Kenya which found that credit constraint prevented women from starting a business and savings constraint further barred them from sustaining it (Brudevold et al. 2017).
While trying to develop within the male dominant society, a woman is subject to biases which pull down her self-confidence hurling her into the loop of less education, low employment and low wages, denying her the benefits of access to formal finance like credit, deposits, insurance, payments and other risk management services (Demirgüç-Kunt et al. 2008). Findings in an Africa based study indicate that access to formal finance is mainly driven by individual characteristics such as education, age, income, residence area, employment status, marital status, household size and degree of trust in financial institutions (Soumaré et al. 2016). Most of the above factors have been identified as obstacles for the FI of women, thus emphasizing women’s overall lack of opportunity to access finance.
Women’s lack of access to financial products and services may also happen because of absence of a bank branch in rural areas which are not commercially viable for banking. Marginalized women living in under- developed far flung areas with poor infrastructure and roads find it hard to regularly visit bank branches in other areas (Manta 2019) so they avoid banking altogether. This problem was addressed by Mueller et al. in 2020, who have worked to develop a travel time model to indicate market accessibility which is the summary travel time to the nearest state capital city in hours. Such indicators may help in planning inclusion strategies.
Another major reason for women’s lack of access to finance is the lack of commercial interest of banks in disbursing small credit to poor women with no credit history or collateral. Such kind of lending may lead to building up of non – performing assets and eventually high losses for banks. Therefore they avoid giving loans to underprivileged women depriving them of economic opportunities. Moreover, the absence of collateral with women is further enhanced by the biased traditional property rights (Manta A. 2019) which deny her resources to build upon a better future.
Looking at the brighter side, ambitious efforts are being made through pathways like Microfinance (Kemp and Berkovitch 2020) and digital inclusion to pull women out of these never ending and self-building barriers.
Ethnicity
In recent studies, ethnicity has emerged an important factor to be considered while promoting FI of women. Gonzales et al., 2020 conducted a controlled laboratory experiment in Bolivia to evaluate if credit officers in microfinance institutions rejected loan applications on the basis of the interaction of gender and ethnicity of potential buyers. Though the study supported that women were benefitting from microcredit, it indicated discrimination based on ethnicity as non-indigenous women had twice the probability of getting loan approved, whereas indigenous women had only 1.5 times the probability getting loan approved as compared to men. This idea was supported by another contemporary study Kaur and Kapuria, 2020, suggesting that households headed by females belonging to socially under privileged backgrounds had a poorer likelihood of getting finance from institutions. This suggests that important insights for FI for women can be derived from ethnic studies.
Experimental studies to Financial Empowerment of Women
As the researchers were identifying various variables related to the financial empowerment of women through exploratory and descriptive studies, a number of empirical and experimental studies were undertaken to understand the relationship between them. Three main types of interventions identified during our analysis were:
- Economic Interventions – Involving cash/ asset transfer, free bank accounts, free services, subsidies
- Social Interventions – Comprising family counseling, life skill training, vocational training, awareness programs
- Bundled Economic and Social Interventions
Twenty four experimental studies during 2000-2020 have been presented in a tabular form (Table 3) for review. For the purpose of our study only the gender based findings have been listed for each study.
Table 3: Tabular Synthesis of the interventions and findings of experimental studies
S no.
|
Author
|
Intervention
|
Place
|
Gender based finding
|
Only Economic Intervention
|
1
|
Dupas and Robinsion (2013)
|
Free individual commitment savings account with high withdrawal fees for self employed vendors (Separate Male and Female groups)
|
Rural Kenya
|
Savings of women increased by 45% - increase in women’s private expenditure by 40 % - no effect on men – long term effects upto 3 year were observed
|
2
|
Schaner (2017)
|
Provision of ATM cards free of charge
|
Rural Kenya
|
22% accounts active in short run only 7 % used in the third year- ATM service increased transaction upto 62% in short run and 68 % in long run – married couple – security decresed as wife’s card was being used by husband – joint saving decisions -male female- increased
|
3
|
Dupas, Keats and Robinson (2014)
|
Formal savings accounts with offer voucher to coverup cost of opening savings account
|
Rural Kenya
|
Male headed households used the account more often than female headed households and men saved more than women
|
4
|
Squires (2018)
|
Cash transfer to access impact of "kinship tax"*
|
Rural Kenya
|
Women faced less pressure to share their income with relatives as they had an excuse that their work options were restricted
|
5
|
Prina (2015)
|
Formal saving account paying 6% annual interest at NGO with no account opening, maintainence or withdrrawal charges for women from 19 slum areas
|
Pokhra, Nepal
|
High demand for small regualar saving accounts. After intervention the capability to bear shocks and perceived improvement in situation increased.
|
6
|
Roy et al. (2015)
|
Livestock (cows and goats) and related training was provided to ultra poor women
|
Bangladesh
|
Perceived ownership of women increased by 9090 taka, while that of men by 942 taka, agriculture asset ownership of women increased by 173 taka, while that of men by 681 taka, land ownership of men increased by 11,292 taka without any change in woman's position.
|
7
|
Lall P. et al. (2017)
|
Microfinance based HIV prevention for Cisgenger and transgender women sex workers ingaged in drug abuse
|
Malaysia
|
After intervention participants recorded high motivation to join other jobs or to start up their own enterprize
|
Only Social Intervention
|
8
|
Cho et al. (2013)
|
3 months vocational training for vulnerable youth
|
Urban Malawi
|
33% participants dropped out: males left to take advantage of unrelated job opportunities, while women left mainly due to external constraints.- Training was costlier for women who had less access to financing and used more personal savings – Women were treated inferior than men during apprenticeship
|
9
|
Adoho et al (2014)
|
Adolescent girls livelihood and lifeskills training with assistance in job placement
|
Urban Liberia
|
Employment increased by 47%, Earnings increased by 80 %, 50% increase in likelihood of Savings, 7% increase in Control over Own Assets. Positive effects on self confidence –Access to mony and less anxiety about future
|
10
|
Bandiera et al. (2015)
|
Vocational and life skills training for woman
|
Uganda
|
Increase in entrepreneurial skills – 72 % increase in likelihood of self employment – 26% lower fertility rates- 6.9 % less likely to get married after two years.
|
11
|
Honorati (2015)
|
Private sector internship and training for vulnerable youth
|
Urban Kenya
|
Probability of women getting employment increased by 4.5 % and for men increased by 6.5 % - Wages for women and girls in the group increased by 132% - Probability of women opening a bank account for saving increased after intervention
|
12
|
Valdivia (2015)
|
Intensive business training and technical assistance
|
Peru
|
Women who received both business training and technical assistance saw an increase of 19 percent in sales
|
13
|
Chakravarty et al. (2016 )
|
Youth employment programs with training from NGO
|
Nepal
|
Greater employment effects were observed for women, Women were more likely to be employed in non farm activities
|
14
|
Diaz and Rosas (2016
|
National Youth job training program
|
Peru
|
50% women as compared to 42% men were formally employed in the long run follow up. 44% women as compared to 22% men were without any employment
|
15
|
Alzua, Cruces and Lopez (2016)
|
Youth training program
|
Urban Argentina
|
Unlike interventions in other parts of the world, men were found to derive greater benefit than women. The intervention resulted in the ability of holding on to one job rather than switching to another.
|
16
|
Stark L. et al.(2018)
|
10 months mentor facilitated sessions for adolescent refugee girls
|
Ethopia
|
Experimental group had no more likelihood than control group in attending school, working for pay or engaging in transactional sexual exploitation
|
Both Social and Economic Intervention
|
17
|
Ibarraran et al. (2012)
|
National level training programme with stipend and accidental insurance for poor and uneducated youth
|
Urban Dominican republic
|
Treatment group women had 25% higher wages and 60% higher chances of getting formal employment than women in the control group
|
18
|
Field et al. (2015)
|
Two days business counseling and loan assistance with a subsample invited to attend with a friend
|
Urban India
|
Borrowing by women increased by 10%. Women who attended alone used loan for home repair while one with a friend used it for business purposes
|
19
|
Buehren et al.(2015)
|
business development training compared to the same training bundled with microfinance for adolescent girls
|
Tanzania
|
In the bundled intervention, earnings increased by 72%, consumption increased by 38%, teen pregnancy reduced by 26%, early marriage reduced by 58%, likelihood of savings increased. Takers for training increased with microfinance
|
20
|
Maitra and Mani (2017)
|
Subsidised 6 months vocational training programme in stitching for young women
|
Urban India
|
Women employment increased by 6 %, Self employment increased by 4% , Monthly earnings increased by 150% - Positive effects were sustained in the medium term follow up – More than 40% trainees could not complete six months course due to distance to training center and lack of available child care support .
|
21
|
Kim et al. (2007)
|
Microfinance for Aids and Gender Equity (IMAGE) with health related training
|
South Africa
|
After 2 years of intervention, the risk of physical /sexual abuse by intimate partner was reduced by more than half.
|
22
|
Brudevold- newman et al. (2017)
|
Two experimental groups - one exposed to only CT and the other with CT along with vocational and lifeskills training - for young poor women
|
Urban Kenya
|
In short term - 56% growth in income of only CT group and 30% growth in income of bundled group. No income effect observed in long run.
|
23
|
Gonzales et al (2020)
|
Timed credit disbursal activities for 70 credit officers
|
Bolivia
|
Women were prefered to men for loan disbursal. Non indegeneous women were prefered 2 times to men, while indegeneous women were prefered 1.5 times to men in loan allocation
|
24
|
Ismayilova, L.et al (2018)
|
Two experimental groups - one exposed to only economic intervention and the other to economic intervention and family coaching - for ultra poor married women
|
Burkina Faso
|
Significant improvement in financial autonomy, marital relations with reduction in IPV was reported in both groups. - integrating psychological component was found even more effective.
|
*Kinship tax – pressure on high productivity entrepreneurs to share income with friends and family
Economic interventions were found highly effective in reducing economic vulnerability of women (Stark et al. 2018; Brudevold et al. 2017). Though, Ismayilova et al. 2018 and Buehren et al. 2015 suggested bundling up of economic and social and psychological interventions could make them more effective.
Interventions implemented for Financial Empowerment of Women
Intervention studies have guided various programs and policies of governments which are essential to support, promote and scale up the literacy, access and growth of financial products and services for women empowerment. Realizing the fact that women empowerment not only benefits women, but also the sustainable development of community (Vithanagama, 2016) numerous banks all over the world like Westpac in Australia, ICICI and SBI in India, Natwest in UK, UNITAR in Kenya have come up with products and services designed especially for women keeping in mind their security, accessibility and affordability. Figure 3 below defines the scope of our further discussion about six successful interventions in the way of FI of women.
Interventions
Government/ Corporates programs and policies
The insights developed from the conclusive studies provided governments, public and private enterprises around the world to design suitable inclusive programs, schemes and policies to address the gender gap in finance. These interventions like government to people transfers and inclusion of post office financial services were evaluated by researchers to comprehend their success or failure in bringing about fairness for women. Swamy (2014) evaluated Indian government’s Inclusive plans, policies and programs including the contribution of National bank of agriculture and rural development (NABARD) and various other microfinance initiatives. The parameters which he chose for evaluation of the impact were: (a) Change in Income level (b) Change in food security (c) Change in living standards (d) Change in production levels and ( e) Change in asset creation. He found that the FI initiatives had much higher impact on women as compared to men and therefore were quite effective in targeting women. These results were cited in many successive researches and laid ground for more intensive inclusive efforts in India.
While acknowledging the imperative need of women empowerment for nation building, governments and related organizations all over the world launched ambitious programs to support women. Strategies of Green Morocco Plan (GMP) were explored by Montanari and Bergh (2019) to conclude towards the persisting miserable circumstances of women despite planned efforts.
Similar to the actions taken by the states, many private sector companies design schemes, products and programs to promote gender equality for the benefit of their women staff. A Turkish study (Gülsoy and Ustaba 2019) investigated diversity management strategies of companies and found that company leadership played an important role in bringing about equality programs at workplace. Though, they also pointed to the profiteering motive of corporate which could be getting served by associating with the image building activities, higher productivity and innovation capability which could result from greater employee satisfaction.
However, some studies claim that many such initiatives had failed because they did not fully anticipate the importance and influence of social institutions like age, gender, ethnicity, literacy, race, background and religion towards building an enabling environment for Inclusion (Gonzales et al. 2020; Kaur and Kapuria 2020).
Microcredit/ Microfinance
Microfinance helps in bringing about financial independence of poor or exploited women by enabling them to participate in the economic activities, improving their status in household and society and reinforcing their power of taking decisions (Zhang and Posso 2017; Lall et al. 2017). A strong correlation was found between the level of outreach of microfinance institutions and women empowerment (Laha and Kuri 2014).
Zhang and Posso, (2017) used case studies to support the constructive role of microfinance to reduce gender inequality. This idea was strengthened by the empirical diary data-based study (Elu et al. 2019) in Mozambique, Sub –Saharan Africa, which revealed that being a woman had a positive treatment effect on procuring microcredit. A longitudinal panel study (Khandker and Samad 2014) comparing effects of microcredit program in Bangladesh showed that a 10% increase in borrowing by women lowered extreme poverty by 5% and increased the willingness to work of women by 0.46%.
The usefulness of microfinance, microcredit, and microenterprises to promote empowerment of women was widely studied (Karlan et al. 2007; Swamy 2014; Laha and Kuri 2014; Zhang and Posso 2017) along with the impact of bundling them up with vocational trainings, education or counseling (Kim 2007; Buehren et al. 2015; Karlan et al. 2007). It has been found that both economic and social empowerment program together were effective in reducing IPV (Kim 2007). One such intervention affirms that Life skills and livelihood training along with microfinance resulted in likelihood of higher earnings and consumption along with reduction in teen pregnancy and early marriage (Buehren et al. 2015). Likewise, it was found that health knowledge along with microcredit could help in reducing health risks (Karlan et al. 2007).
On the other hand, the success of microfinance policy based on outreach was challenged with an argument that institutions & their policies had engaged in a residual rather than the relational understanding of poverty (Johnson 2013). Similarly, it was also questioned by Gonzales et al. in 2020 by highlighting the regressive attitude and biasness of credit officer against indigenous women.
Formal accounts / services
Formal account ownership and its use have been established as an important indicator of FI and with the support of several research experiments it has been adopted as an important policy intervention in many countries. Worldwide, 55% males have a formal account at a financial institution whereas only 47% women own or co-own such an account with a gloomier picture in developing countries where women are 28% less likely to have an account at a formal financial institution. (Global findex 2021)
Bank accounts result in savings which lead to wealth creation which is an identified determinant of FI. A study in Kenya found that women made use of savings account far more than men. It observed that there was 45% increase in savings on business investments among women when commitment-saving bank accounts were opened along with a high fee on withdrawal (Dupas and Robinsion 2013). But, in their successive study (Dupas et al. 2014) where instead of a compulsive intervention, the mediation was only to facilitate account opening, it was found that men saved more than women and were more frequent in making transactions.
Hence, mere opening of bank accounts in the names of women will not ensure their inclusion in the financial mainstream, their usage of the same over a long run is crucial development. An experimental study found that 22% of such mediated accounts were active in short run and only 7 % were used in the third year. Many women claim that they use the formal account of someone else in their family so they do not need an account in their own name. In many cases husband held the access to the ATM card of their wife hinting towards the family structures which deprive woman of sense of ownership making her dependent on other family members in financial matters. (Schaner 2017; Global Findex 2021)
On the brighter side, it was found that with the sense of ownership on wealth, women tend to appreciate themselves by spending on their personal needs elevating their sense of self-worth. There was a 40 % increase in woman’s personal expenditure (Dupas and Robinsion 2013) and also an increase in education and health after the account opening (Prina 2015). Additionally, the ATM cards issued along with bank accounts were found to be quite popular among married couples as transactions increased up-to 62% in short run and 68 % in long run. It was found to enable wives to participate in joint financial decisions along with their husband (Schaner 2017). These results reflect good impact of free account opening and subsidized or free financial services on inclusion, but also emphasize on the need to ensure the benefits reach out to the targeted vulnerable women and have long term effects.
Cash/asset transfer program
Men get financial support from their parents to set up their career, while women are compensated with a dowry which eventually gets passed on to her husband as an economic support to deter his urge of wife beating in case of helplessness. This practice has been found to have high repercussions against woman who is used by her husband or in-laws to extract more money from her parents and it often results in fatal violence. The other popular way to compensate woman is by providing her with high education which enables her to contribute financially to the new household without being a burden. Though this enables her to earn livelihood, yet the head-start that males get with the traditional inheritance creates a major gap in their wealth ownership. Therefore interventions with direct cash/ asset transfer have been studied and implemented for betterment of women.
CTs benefit women through financial wellbeing, economic security and emotional wellbeing leading to reduction in intimate partner violence and significant improvement in woman’s status and relationships in the family. (Ismayilova et al. 2018; Buller et al. 2018)
Studies supported adding cognitive and emotive features like training, counseling and coaching with economic strategies in the policy interventions to empower women (Ismayilova et al. 2018; Brudevold et al. 2017). When CT intervention was compared with the one coupled with life skill training, it was found that sole cash transfers were more useful in increasing income of women in short run only whereas likelihood of employment could be increased with life skill training and CT bundled together (Brudevold et al. 2017). An interesting study to find the real beneficiaries of CT in long run found that benefits were largely retained by women as they had less pressure to share their income with their relatives on the pretext that their earning options were limited (Squires 2018).
Impact of productive asset transfer (livestock) in the name of women was explored in an experimental setting in Bangladesh. It revealed that though women’s asset ownership increased significantly, yet the real beneficiaries were men as instead of women (“fly paper effect”), male sole ownership in agriculture and land increased significantly after the intervention (Roy et al. 2015). This reaffirms the earlier made point about the way dowry benefits are reaped by the male members.
The usefulness of CT or asset transfer cannot be denied in the short run where lack of cash or assets averts women from starting a business but, their limitation to save prevents them in sustaining the benefits in the long run (Brudevold et al. 2017).
Self-Help Groups (SHG), Philanthropy, NGOs
SHGs are informal groups of rural women formed to socially and economically support each other with a sense of belongingness and responsibility among themselves. These groups foster FI along with the social empowerment of women. Members join the SHG mainly to get financial support to meet basic needs especially in case of emergency (Nagaraj and Sundaram 2017).
Most SHG members in are young in age, are less educated, have less income and lack any kind of previous experience in handling money. After their SHG experience women have been found to be managing cash (Kabeer 2011; Maclean 2012; Ramachandar and Pelto 2009) though some studies have found that even after SHG training there was no impact on asset formation or income of participants (Deininger and Liu 2013), women remained unsure and pressurized about their financial decisions especially in presence of a community member (Maclean 2012; Ramachandar and Pelto 2009).
It was found that when the members become old in the group they start realizing their social responsibilities which transform their social participation and build up their confidence in taking decisions (Mehta et al. 2011), enabling them to fight against exploitation at family or society level.
Many philanthropist and NGOs have dedicated themselves to the cause of women’s empowerment. BOMA project in Kenya which works to achieve UN sustainable development goals of poverty reduction, reducing gender inequality and mitigating effects of climate change, has been instrumental in increasing income and savings (Tiwari et al. 2019). In 2019, Hendriks studied the logic and strategy of the functioning of one such philanthropic Bill & Melinda Gates foundation which aims to reduce the gender gap through FI while in 2020, Kemp and Berkovitch worked to study the feminist NGOs in Israel.
Digital Inclusion
Information and communication technology (ICT) has pulled down many hurdles in accessibility to finance so its potential role in improving female economic participation has been realized. Also, fintechs and other new digital financial services providers have partnered with banks to reap the benefits that they themselves make by targeting women centric products and are increasingly collaborating for financial empowerment of women.
Gender was identified as a key variable in consumer readiness in adopting mobile payment services and strategizing market segmentation (Humbani and Wiese 2018). Digital financial services has been discussed in papers as one of the most effective FI models (Arnold and Gammage 2019, Natile 2019) promising greater privacy, confidentiality and control of women over their finances (Duflo 2012). An influential African research by Efobi et al. in 2018 found a strong positive relationship between progressions in information technology through mobile & internet penetration and the participation of women in economy.
With the advent of mobile banking, many women who could not reach out to financial institutions have been linked to financial services and are more likely to save than men even with limited amounts (Ouma et al. 2017) gaining greater flexibility to spend on household expenditures and child welfare measures (Duflo 2012). In 2016, Suri and Jack found that Kenyan mobile money system M-PESA was able to lift 194,000 households which were 2% of the total households, out of poverty with a significant positive impact in female households driven by higher savings and better employment of women. Acknowledging its phenomenal reach, drawbacks and efficiencies of mobile banking were discussed further to promote FI (Humbani and Wiese 2018; Arnold and Gammage 2019). Prospects of Digitizing G2P payments were evaluated (Klapper and Singer 2017) to find that with the backing of government there could be dramatic reduction in costs, higher efficiencies, transparency and greater acceptance of technology.
Deliberating the imperfections, on one hand, complex financial products and services are being launched every other day, on the other almost 80% of women in low income economies still get their wages in cash (Klapper and Dutt 2015). Inherent inequalities in financial access (Klapper and Dutt 2015), innumeracy, illiteracy and unfamiliarity with technology (Tiwari et al. 2019) are barriers in woman’s digital FI. Reiterating the above idea, exploration of inclusionary arrangements found the exploitation of the M-PESA program to identify market opportunities causing its failure to adopt the redistributive measures necessary for the benefit of society Natile 2019. This suggests that there is a need of a very well planned and systematic digital intervention with greater transparency, sensitivity and awareness.