On Our Radar: December 2022

The business case for women’s leadership is clear. But little data exists on small and growing enterprises, especially in emerging economies. Even less data is available on the agricultural industry—a sector that 2.5 billion people globally depend on for their livelihoods, and one in which women receive only 7% of total investment. Through an analysis of 10 years of Root Capital’s global data, Inclusion Pays: The Returns on Investing in Women in Agriculture sheds new light on the benefits—to women, businesses, and investors—of investing in women in agriculture.

This EFI Note adds to the literature on gender in the financial sector by providing a first assessment of the gender leadership gap in the Ethiopian banking industry. It is the result of a collaboration between the World Bank’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab; its Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice; and key financial sector institutions in Ethiopia, motivated by the government of Ethiopia’s commitment to promoting women’s career advancement in the financial industry. The report shows that women are significantly underrepresented in leadership positions across Ethiopia’s commercial banking sector, and that the percentage of female staff members decreases with each step of seniority. 

"Portfolios of the poor" provided a breakthrough in understanding the complex financial lives of poor people. The Digital Portfolios of the Poor (DPP) project by Decodis provides an opportunity to learn how poor people, especially women, really use digital financial services. Watch the launch event to find out more. 

Sammar Essmat, Gender Lead, Middle East, Central Asia and Turkey at the IFC, talks to Mustafa Alrawi about why investing in closing gender gaps is driving economic success at the macro level and company level.

What is the frontier of financial inclusion? Of course, there is a geographical frontier: people in rural areas are more often excluded from the financial system. There’s also a technological frontier: while digital technology has greatly expanded the reach of financial services, those on the other side of the digital divide are being left behind. But there’s also a social frontier: often in the form of social norms that dictate who can – and can’t – use financial services. In this episode, we hear from Women’s Micro Bank, a women-owned bank in Papua New Guinea that pushed geographical and technological boundaries in its attempts to expand women’s access to banking services but ran into its biggest challenges at the social frontier.