Financial Inclusion and Gender Barriers for Rural Women 

Abstract

This paper tries to examine the gendered nature of barriers faced by rural women which intersects financial inclusion worldwide. Although financial inclusion for rural women has been linked with poverty eradication and economic empowerment, the delivery of financial products and services to rural women has been at a disadvantageous position. Some of the barriers women experience in accessing financial resources are embedded in the patriarchal bias of the society. Gender related barriers are those barriers that are specific to women which arise due to discrimination and societal norms. Gender related barriers that inhibit women's ability to access to financial services and block women empowerment should be considered carefully while preparing these programs. A feminist analysis was done to understand the causes of gender related barriers and measures adopted worldwide to devise innovative strategies. Gender-transformative approaches to financial inclusion go beyond focussing on access to financial services to challenging the existing gender inequalities that impede women's financial inclusion and economic empowerment.

Barriers and interventions on the way to empower women through financial inclusion: a 2 decades systematic review (2000–2020)

“…Her production, reproduction and sexuality are controlled by men. This biased treatment of women in the household adversely affects all levels of her social interactions, depriving her of access to resources and opportunities (Manta, 2019;Ghosh and Günther, 2018) and financial independence (Schaner, 2017).…”

Financial Inclusion of Women and Gender Gap in Access to Finance: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Some of the studies have also analyzed the impact of household characteristics, individual characteristics, socio-economic and socio-cultural characteristics on female financial inclusion (Adegbite & Machethe, 2020; Kemal, 2019). Patriarchal societal structures impose barriers to women’s financial access and employment in formal economy is a key determinant of increasing their inclusion in formal financial sector (Manta, 2019). Doss et al (2020) postulated that value of physical assets and household physical wealth of a woman are determining factors of having formal savings.…”

Barriers and Interventions on the way to Empower Women through Financial Inclusion A Two Decades Systematic Review (2000-2020)

“…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 nancial independence (Schaner 2017).…”

“…Financial skills, Financial attitude and Financial behavior as key factors to determine nancial 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 nancial risks(Manta 2019). With lack of nancial knowledge and skills, women cannot access nancial services and the bene ts of formal nancial system making them economically dependent on men and con ned to the vicious circle of low investments, low income and low pro ts (Manta 2019…”

“…Most of the above factors have been identi ed as obstacles for the FI of women, thus emphasizing women's overall lack of opportunity to access nance.Women's lack of access to nancial 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 ung areas with poor infrastructure and roads nd 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.…”