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Dear FinEquity Members,
I would like to extend my gratitude to those of you who have completed our annual member survey featured below. Of our respondents who have been with the community for a significant portion of time, 86% indicated that FinEquity has enhanced their connections to other individuals. This bodes well for the respondents who are new members and deem it “too early to tell” what value the community will bring to them in this regard.
Our recent community consultation on MSMEs reminded me of what diverse experience and good relationships we have! With that, I extend an invitation to those of you who haven’t yet completed our survey to make your voices heard. We are listening.
Yasmin Bin-Humam
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It’s that time of the year! We have launched our Annual Survey 2021! We would love to hear about your FinEquity experience. Please take our 4-minute survey to help us improve.
We know your time is important and we are incredibly grateful for your commitment and engagement to make FinEquity a valuable community of practice.
Thank you in advance for your participation. |
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| Conversations with Providers - Deconstructing the Monolith: Segmentation of Women Clients |
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Coming up in June 2021
Financial Service Providers are increasingly realizing that needs and preferences differ across the female economy. Differences may range depending on women’s race, age, caste, stage of business, profession, location, and other socially defined characteristics and markers. These factors all influence and impact the way different women use and receive financial services.
This series will feature Financial Service Providers (FSP) that are investing in segmenting their female customers to better understand the specific financial needs, preferences, and behaviors as a part of developing tailored value propositions for these specific segments. Each webinar will include a fast-paced conversation with one or two key representatives from the FSP.
Our first event in the series will take place on June 2, 2021, with the participation of the BBVA Microfinance Foundation.
Stay tuned for the registration details of the first conversation and more dates!
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Save the Date
Applying a Gender Lens to PAYGo Solar |
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| FinEquity and BMGF Community Consultation |
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As part of our commitment to learning and supporting the development of digital financial systems and services that truly work for women, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and FinEquity partnered to facilitate a 3-day online community consultation about how digitizing services and products for MSMEs may impact women’s economic empowerment.
The first day of the consultation focused on the value of digital financial services to MSMEs owned and operated by women as well as those that employ women. You can read more about the topic on our DGroups platform. We then tackled the barriers and challenges that may lead to the gender gap in digital services, you can follow this conversation here. On the third and last day, we discussed how digital financial services enable women’s financial inclusion and economic empowerment. You can check the discussion from the third day by clicking on the following thread.
Please find a summary of the discussions here.
Thank you to everyone who shared resources, stories, opinions, and perspectives from their work. The consultation was a robust and insightful discussion as well as a perfect example of the FinEquity community in action!
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| Upcoming Events and Opportunities |
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Three-Workshop Series: How to Design Financial Products and Services for Women. May 26 - June 16 and 30, 2021, 11:00 am EDT.
In this series of FinEquity ALC workshops, the BBVA Microfinance Foundation will explain why it is important to design specific products for women in Latin America and the Caribbean. We will be sharing lessons learned so that participants can extract ideas that can help them design and implement these products in their organization with a gender perspective. Please find more information and the registration on our website.
Request for Proposals: Apply now for up to $50,000 for research on WEE & DFS
Women’s Economic Empowerment and Digital Finance (WEE-DiFine) is an exciting research initiative, led by the BRAC Institute for Governance and Development (BIGD), committed to generating a comprehensive body of evidence around the impact of digital financial services (DFS) on women’s economic empowerment (WEE) across South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. This call is dedicated to funding pilot, qualitative and measurement studies, with small grants up to $50,000 available per category. Apply now! The deadline is May 31, 2021.
Webinar - Leveraging Digital Platforms for Deepening Women's Financial Inclusion
Women’s World Banking and FinEquity invite you to a conversation on the potential for digital platforms and payments to serve as an opportunity to increase financial inclusion. Join us as we discuss the ways in which digital literacy, e-commerce, social commerce, and digital marketing might serve as on-ramps to financial inclusion for women-owned and women-led MSMEs. With an eye to this market opportunity, attendees will see new ways for women to actively participate in the digital future of finance. Register here. |
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Seeking Concrete Actions to Empower Women Financially Through the Generation Equality Forum
Guest blog by Rosita Najmi
The insufficient and fragile progress made in the 26 years since the Fourth World Conference on Women took place in Beijing, combined with the socio-economic impact of COVID-19, requires urgent and bold action. No one can dispute the inequality data, as it is clear, but so is the evidence base for the promise of gender equality. Countering the COVID-19 pandemic’s gender-regressive effects alone could show $13 trillion in global GDP gains by 2030.
The Generation Equality Forum (GEF), a civil society-centered, multi-stakeholder, and global gathering for gender equality, convened by UN Women and co-hosted by the governments of Mexico and France, in partnership with civil society and youth, is seeking to address some of those inequality issues. Through co-creation and diverse and inclusive consultations, the Forum brings together feminist advocates from across the globe to foster action and renew movements for gender equality and launch a set of six innovative and multi-stakeholder Action Coalitions.
Visit our website to read more.
Building Resilience through Women's Groups: A discussion on why psychosocial factors are critical for their success - Webinar Recording and Resources
This event, hosted by FinEquity and the Resilience, Evaluation, Analysis and Learning (REAL) Associate Award, created a space and time for practitioners, researchers, and donors to think critically about the role women’s groups may play to build resilience. Visit the website for more information.
Empowering Women on a Journey Towards Digital Financial Capability
This event hosted by Women's World Banking, with FinEquity as a contributing partner, addressed issues related to digital financial capability and its role in building the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary for women customers to effectively engage with digital financial services. Please visit the Women's World Banking website to find the recording. |
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