Advancing Women’s Financial Inclusion in 2024

The landscape of women’s financial inclusion efforts is constantly evolving. Women face growing challenges, including the unique threats climate change poses to their lives and livelihoods. In turn, our community is continuously evaluating and changing our approach to better serve women’s needs.

At our 2023 annual convening, FinEquity brought the community together to discuss how we can best address the nexus of women’s financial inclusion and climate change. The convening afforded us the opportunity to launch FinEquity’s 2023 Global Consultation, introduced by FinEquity Technical Advisory Committee member Carolina Trivelli, to determine the most pressing priority areas to collectively advance progress on women’s financial inclusion and ensure we are best meeting the evolving needs of women across the globe.

Through the Global Consultation, we received over 170 online survey responses and held focus group discussions with more than 500 participants online and in-person in Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Unsurprisingly given the focus of the FinEquity 2023 annual convening, the nexus between women’s financial inclusion and climate change emerged as a top priority area. Understanding how we can measure women’s economic empowerment outcomes through financial inclusion initiatives also came out as a strong need. Some regional variations appeared, with women-led micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) presenting as a topic of high interest both in Africa and LAC. The digitization of savings group was of interest specifically to our Africa audiences, while gender-sensitive product design emerged as a priority in LAC.

These insights have fed into the evolution of FinEquity’s priorities as a community of practice for our new fiscal year, from July 2023 until June 2024. Our goals remain to foster connection, sharing, learning, and influence in the women’s financial inclusion space through the following focus areas:

• Connect and Share: FinEquity will continue to engage with our Global membership and strengthen alliances, especially in the regional hubs of Africa and LAC. For example, FinEquity Africa will facilitate a working group on digitizing savings groups.
• Learn: We are eager to promote learning on the nexus between climate, gender, and financial inclusion, and will seek to document a few examples from our community members in Africa. We will also promote uptake of measurement indicators in women’s economic empowerment through financial inclusion in our Co-Lab partnership. At a regional level, curating resources on gender-lens investing for women-led MSMEs will be prioritized, especially for our communities in Africa and LAC.
• Influence: As we work together with our community on these collective priorities, we will continue to disseminate lessons learned that are meaningful and actionable to help make real progress on our collective vision: a world where women have the capabilities to access, negotiate, and control financial services that improve their lives. 

We look forward to working with our vibrant community in these areas as we continue to strive to meet the evolving needs of women across the globe, and to promote their economic empowerment through financial inclusion. Please be in touch with us about ways you/your organization can engage on these topics!