Global Findex Gender Brief: Women and Financial Inclusion (World Bank Global Findex)

Summary

• Worldwide, 78 percent of men have an account, compared to 74 percent of women.p.1
• In developing economies, 74 percent of men have an account compared to 68 percent of women, creating a 6 percentage point gender gap.p.1
• Regional gender gaps reach 12 percentage points in Sub-Saharan Africa and 13 percentage points in Middle East and North Africa.p.2
• In Sub-Saharan Africa, 86 percent of men own a mobile phone, compared with 77 percent of women.p.4
• In developing economies, 59 percent of men report being able to reliably come up with emergency money, compared with 50 percent of women.p.9
• Globally, 45 million unbanked women receive government payments in cash.p.10

Key insights

1. The global gender gap in access to financial services dropped to 4 percentage points for the first time in the past decade.p.1
2. In 7 of 15 Sub-Saharan African economies with high mobile money usage, women were as or more likely than men to only have a mobile money account.p.2
3. Unbanked women in Sub-Saharan Africa are 5 percentage points more likely on average than unbanked men to lack formal identification.p.5
4. Account-owning men in developing economies are 6 percentage points more likely than account-owning women to have made or received digital payments.p.6
5. Thirty-two percent of women and 40 percent of men in developing economies received a digital payment in the 12 months prior to the survey.p.6
6. Latin America and the Caribbean exhibits the largest financial resilience gender gap at 16 percentage points.p.9
7. Unbanked women in developing economies are 10 percentage points more likely than unbanked men to say they would need help using an account.p.10
8. Digitalizing cash government payments could onboard up to 45 million unbanked women into the formal financial system.p.10