Driving Women’s Financial Inclusion Through Data

Despite advances in financial inclusion across the globe, gender gaps persist with four in 10 women in the developing world lacking access to financial services of any kind. The availability of data and an understanding of how to capitalize on this data to improve financial access underpins policy decisions vis-à-vis financial inclusion, helping regulators and financial service providers design policies and set targets as per market needs. In this milieu, gender-disaggregated data becomes increasingly crucial for measuring women’s financial access and advocating for women-centric policies/strategies.

This session will explore advances in measuring women’s financial access and leveraging data to enable women’s financial inclusion. The panelists will specifically discuss experiences from Pakistan and Ethiopia under the FISF program and beyond. The four major themes that will be covered under this session are:

• How innovations in data capture and analytics can enhance women’s access to finance.
• The importance of setting strategic, gender-based targets to mainstream women’s financial inclusion as a core policy agenda.
• Importance of gender-disaggregated data for women-centric policy making.
• Impact of data-backed policies and programs in supporting women’s financial inclusion.