Women's Financial Inclusion: A Guide to Knowledge Resources IWD 2025
What have we learned over the past year about women's financial inclusion? While progress has been made, this work remains as important as ever. The blogs and publications we curated on FinDev over the last year discussed topics ranging from women-centered product design to guidance on reaching more women and the role of savings groups. This Guide provides with you a curated selection of key knowledge resources on these topics and more.
For more in-depth research, blogs, events and updates on various aspects of women's financial inclusion, visit and join FinEquity, the women's financial inclusion community of practice convened by CGAP.
Recent Blogs on Women's Financial Inclusion
Women Entrepreneurs Are Confident and Capable - So Why Are Systems Holding Them Back?
New research from CARE shows that women entrepreneurs set clear business goals and believe they can achieve them, but they lack credit. Women-centered design can help break systemic barriers to offer more and better credit options for all.
How Savings Groups Can Address Gender Inequality Through Dialogue
Unequal power dynamics and discriminatory social norms can stand in the way of women gaining full control of their financial resources. Engaging in four types of dialogue – from household to systems – can help shift these norms.
Magnifying the Power of Women’s Savings Groups
VisionFund has been exploring how formal loans to savings groups can help overcome capital constraints and improve members’ resilience.
What Happened When We Trained 70,000 Women on Financial Literacy
Early results from a BRAC International pilot show how financial literacy training can enhance the impact of financial inclusion.
How Do We Reach 80 Million Women and Increase Their Incomes by 30%?
Greta Bull of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation shares their latest thinking on achieving impact and building an inclusive credit ecosystem.
Resetting the Mindset Toward Investing in African Women Entrepreneurs
Eveline Tall, ambassador for AFAWA (Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa), shares why this initiative is necessary and how they are working to reduce the regional gender gap in financing.
Publications on Women's Financial Inclusion
How To Measure Women’s Economic Empowerment in Financial Inclusion: A Menu of Indicators
This paper introduces a menu of 19 indicators to measure Women's Economic Empowerment (WEE) through increased financial inclusion. Developed with experts and the FinEquity community, it provides actionable guidance for stakeholders to assess and track WEE outcomes, generating evidence to drive more effective financial inclusion interventions across diverse contexts.
Advancing Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment
UN Women and United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) launched a target setting guidance on gender equality and women’s empowerment for commercial banks. The aim of this new guidance is to support banks – both retail and corporate – to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment through the lens of sustainable, inclusive and responsible finance using four critical pathways.
Policy Diagnostic: Climate-Responsive Policy for Women’s Financial Inclusion
This policy diagnostic explores how policy solutions can empower climate-vulnerable communities through women’s economic empowerment.
A Practical Guide to Revolutionizing Product Design in Financial Services
This Practical Guide to Revolutionizing Product Design in Financial Services focuses on the “how” of women-centered design, offering a step-by-step roadmap for financial services providers to implement the shared methodology within their organizations.
Beyond Money: Savings Groups as a Platform for Addressing Root Causes of Gender Inequality
This learning report focuses on the role of savings groups in addressing systemic gender inequities in markets.
The Next Chapter for Women’s Financial Inclusion: Moving Toward a Visible Step-Change
This gender conceptual framework aims to offer a new vision of women's financial inclusion through a whole-of-market approach, requiring commitment from both sectors to drive impactful change.
The Mobile Gender Gap Report 2024
The Mobile Gender Gap Report 2024 explores the latest data on the mobile gender gap, the key barriers preventing women’s equal access to and use of mobile, and what is needed to close the mobile internet gender gap. It also highlights the socio-economic benefits of addressing these barriers for the mobile industry, the economy and society more broadly, and women themselves.
Women and Equitable Growth in a Resource-Constrained World
This paper addresses the need to reform the international development finance architecture in ways that expand access to affordable credit for women entrepreneurs in the Global South, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.
Her Fintech Edge: Market Insights for Inclusive Growth
The study explores the representation of women within fintech portfolios and the factors influencing it. It investigates whether fintech firms actively target women customers and the strategies they employ.
Rural Women and Financial Inclusion
This document highlights practical and actionable approaches from the sector in order to guide the work of practitioners focused on improving the gender-responsiveness of design and delivery of rural finance interventions.
Latest from Our Blog
View all blog posts
Women Entrepreneurs Are Confident and Capable - So Why Are Systems Holding Them Back?
How Artificial Intelligence Can Revolutionize Financial Inclusion
Please also include this resource by the Islamic Development Bank titled "Islamic Microfinance for Women: A resource guide for practitioners" see https://www.isdb.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/2021-02/ISLAMI…
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