FinEquity LinkedIn Dialogue on #GenderNorms

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You are invited to join a two‑week LinkedIn group discussion on Gender Norms and Women’s Financial Inclusion!

Gender norms remain some of the most persistent -and often invisible- barriers limiting women’s ability to access, use, and benefit from financial services. Financial service providers (FSPs), regulators and other financial sector stakeholders are not neutral actors in this system. Through every policy, product design choice, delivery channel and partnership decision, they either inadvertently reinforce restrictive expectations or actively contribute to transforming them.

To delve further into this topic with the community, FinEquity and CGAP are hosting a two‑week asynchronous LinkedIn discussion on gender norms, from February 23 to March 6, 2026. This dialogue aims to strengthen our collective understanding of how gender norms shape women’s financial inclusion and to identify practical, system‑level strategies and interventions to address them.

The discussion will bring together practitioners, funders, FSP staff, regulators, researchers, and experts working on women's financial inclusion and economic empowerment. Participants will draw on insights from three recent CGAP publications, which offer practical tools for diagnosing gender norms and designing interventions that shift behaviors across financial ecosystems.

What to Expect

Over two weeks, participants will engage in four thematic threads featuring experts from the sector. Topics include:

Week 1: Understanding Gender Norms as a Financial System Issue

• Financial Sector Actors Are Not Neutral - How Norms Shape Market Behavior
• Classifying Gender Norms to Identify Practical Entry Points for Change

Week 2: From Evidence to Action - Changing Market Actor Behavior

• Diagnosing Gender Norms and Surfacing Institutional Bias
• Designing Interventions that Shift Market Actor Incentives and Practices

You will be invited to share experiences, questions, challenges, examples and resources from your own work. Weekly synthesis posts will highlight key insights, and a follow‑up webinar in March will showcase discussion takeaways and emerging practices.

Who Should Join

This discussion is open to:

• Financial inclusion and market systems practitioners
• Donors, foundations and concessional investors
• FSPs, fintech innovators and ecosystem actors
• Regulators and policymakers
• Gender and social norms researchers
• Women’s economic empowerment practitioners

How to Participate

Simply join the LinkedIn group and contribute at your own pace during the two‑week period. The dialogue is asynchronous to accommodate global participation and time zones.

Join the FinEquity LinkedIn Group here.

Discussion dates: February 23 – March 6, 2026

We hope you will be part of this collaborative effort to better understand and address the gender norms that shape financial market systems, and to help advance more inclusive and transformative financial ecosystems.

What to Read?

• A series of key resources from CGAP on gender norms.
• A practical framework to understand and act on gender norms.
• A diagnostic guide provides a field-tested methodology for diagnosing gender norm constraints.
• A design guide offers practical tools to help shape financial services that better meet women’s needs.
• A gender lens regulatory framework helps identify how regulation can impact men and women differently.