Financial inclusion for women is an imperative - not an option.

Having just returned from the World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings in Washington DC, where I was invited to help launch the final recommendation of the UN panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment, I am reflecting with mixed feelings on the title of our report: “Leave no one behind”. Wherever we look in the world, we still see women and girls being left behind in their millions. Over 1.1 billion women in the world do not even have a bank account. Over forty percent of women and girls worldwide are excluded from the financial system. Only 55% of women participate in the labour force and those who do, are paid 10-30% less than men doing the same job. These are the facts, and the list could continue. So we simply cannot do enough to campaign against the conditions that have held women back for so long.

Wherever we look in the world, we still see women and girls being left behind in their millions. Over 1.1 billion women in the world do not even have a bank account. Over forty percent of women and girls worldwide are excluded from the financial system.

As our panel spoke primarily to Finance Ministers in Washington, I was struck by the fact that this is one of the most relevant audiences for us to address. In our aim to initiate concrete actions that can lead to real transformation for women globally, Finance Ministers are ideally placed to influence their governments’ policies, make informed decisions about investments and ultimately allocate resources and finances that can make a meaningful impact on people’s lives.

The UN Report identified seven drivers for transformative change, of which the challenge to help women “build assets” is key. This means not only the acquisition of property, but also financial and digital assets. Making this happen will require changes at the deepest level. In so many countries it would not be enough to give women access to paid work or bank accounts. People can’t run before they can walk. Discrimination against women is so deeply engrained, that it will take hard work at many levels to break it down. Therefore empowerment at the deepest level will be extremely important as well as promoting education in financial literacy as part of a long-term process.

However, in the world today, the circumstances and levels of development in this regard could not be more diverse. In our work with the panel we recognised that there is no silver bullet or “one size fits all” approach. It will require great diligence by multilateral bodies, the business world and civil society alike to make the necessary changes. Ensuring economic empowerment and financial inclusion will require strong commitment on the part of governments, organisations and companies throughout the world. They will achieve this with nothing less than the power of regulation, policies, opportunities, partnerships and investments.

The report provides tool-kits, which show a clear roadmap for the actions that need to be taken. Many organisations will be able to work with them immediately to drive much-needed change. Others will require grassroots initiatives to break down prejudice and long-held misconceptions first. If we consider that globally 130 million girls still do not have access to education and that around 500 million women across the globe are illiterate, there is much work to be done. 

The First High Level Panel report highlighted that the advancement of women’s economic empowerment globally will depend “on closing the gender gap in unpaid work and investing in quality care services and decent care jobs.” This is based on research data which shows that women’s unpaid work “contributes $10 trillion a year globally, or 13 percent of global domestic product ….” If it could be more widely recognised that women take a disproportionately high share of the responsibility of caring for our society’s young, sick and elderly people – and that this care work is largely unpaid – it would be clear that women subsidise the economy and thus bear a double burden: They have a lack of time on the one hand and limited opportunity on the other. In this regard, women living in poverty or in rural areas face particular challenges, as they often have no access to childcare services, while at the same time being burdened by cumbersome domestic work.

Among other actions, the report also identified several promising and proven measures to bring about social protection to address these issues: 

• Non-transferable maternity and paternity leave benefits and job protection
• Flexible work arrangements. 
• Publicly recognising companies, which are implementing good business practices to support gender equality or who offer flexible work arrangements 

So the importance of the role of governments could not be clearer. The World Bank placed Women’s Economic Empowerment at the top of its agenda for the Spring Meetings this year, in order to highlight how governments can make the changes that are necessary in order to achieve digital and financial inclusion for women and men. Irrespective of the state of a country’s economic and social development, governments can work with ‘gender budgeting’ (a gender-based assessment of budgets that evaluates and takes into consideration the impact of investments and savings on gender issues). As Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau shared with the panel during the Spring meetings, this is already successfully being done in Canada. If governments can take a holistic approach, focusing on interdependent and mutually beneficial actions, such as investing in girl’s and women’s education and in digital and financial inclusion, this will be of equal benefit to both girls and boys all over the world.

If governments can take a holistic approach, focusing on interdependent and mutually beneficial actions, such as investing in girl’s and women’s education and in digital and financial inclusion, this will be of equal benefit to both girls and boys all over the world.

I am happy to see that many governments, institutions and organisations are already making important changes to ensure that women are no longer left behind.

Now is the time to join them with a systematic approach. The time has come to empower the other half of society – women.