The check guide facilitates financial service providers, business support agencies, and government departments to have a fresh look – and a systematic assessment – of the extent to which they provide women entrepreneurs with appropriate products and services. WE-Check Guide for financial institutions: Together with the ILO Women's Entrepreneurship Development ( WED) programme, Social Finance is promoting the use of the Women’s Entrepreneurship Self-Check (WE-Check).While gender is mainstreamed in the programme, there is a specific training module on “Microfinance for women”. Making Microfinance Work – Managing product diversification: This is a training programme for financial institutions developing products or distribution efforts to reach new market segments.The ILO financial education programme has benefitted thousands of women, including in Argentina (see video), Egypt, Morocco, Peru and Tunisia. The ILO has developed a number of training materials adapted for various target groups, including women. It is essential for increasing financial literacy and helps women to achieve better business results, better equality, and more empowerment. Financial education: Financial education provides basic skills related to earning, spending, budgeting, borrowing, saving, and using other financial services such as insurance and money transfers.While we mainstream gender in all our work, some examples where we explicitly focus on women include: The work of Social Finance and gender Women’s empowerment through financial inclusion is an essential component of promoting the ILO’s Decent Work Agenda. Targeting women with financial inclusion can also benefit households, communities and society. Many microfinance institutions (MFIs) have risen to the challenge, focussing primarily on women, but to change the status quo, much more is needed, from formalising MFIs to providing women with financial knowledge.įurthermore, our research shows that women tend to contribute larger portions of their income to household consumption than their male counterparts do. Commercial banks often focus on men and formal businesses, neglecting the women who make up a large and growing segment of the informal economy. While economic inclusion can lead to financial inclusion and vice versa, gender dynamics hold women back on both accounts. In the 18-49 age group, divorced women are more than twice as likely to be poor than divorced men. Divorce, separation and widowhood affect women more negatively than men. Results from a study done by UN Women and the World Bank show that between the age of 20 and 34, women are more likely to be poor than men. Why target women with financial inclusion? Recent studies have shown that that women and girls fare worse than men and boys on a range of factors that predispose them to poverty. Equal access to insurance is important so that women can take advantage of risk management solutions, including business insurance for women-led enterprises. There is also a gender protection gap, with fewer women using insurance than men. Even before the pandemic, fifty-six per cent of all those without a bank account were women – meaning that nearly a billion women are unbanked. Women do not enjoy the same access to financial services as men. To make matters worse, the COVID-19 crisis caused unprecedented job losses, hitting women the hardest, further widening gender gaps. Women are also more likely to work in informal employment and in vulnerable, low-paid or undervalued jobs. Less than half of all eligible women participate in the labour force, compared to 75 per cent of men. The financial services industry can be both a catalyst and barometer of gender equality Women, the world of work and financial inclusion gap Globally, women have fewer economic opportunities. Whether they work in the home or outside of it, whether they are employed or self-employed, financial inclusion provides women the tools for accumulating assets, generating income, managing financial risks, and fully participating in the economy. However, only with equal access to the full range of needs-based financial services – savings, credit, insurance, payments – and the accompanying financial education, do women stand a chance of social and economic empowerment. On its own, financial inclusion will not result in gender equality. The financial services industry can be both a catalyst and barometer of gender equality. Gender dynamics, however, can and do change over time.
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