Sophie Mills

Gender Lead, FSD Network

Sophie leads the Financial Sector Deepening (FSD) Network’s Collaborative Gender Programme, which works with the ten FSDs across Africa to support their capacity to deliver systemic gender impacts while building inclusive financial systems in their countries of operation. She has over seventeen years of experience working in inclusive finance and gender in sub–Saharan Africa. She holds a Ph.D from the London School of Economics and a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Wales.  

By Sophie Mills

Blog

Unlocking Invisible Barriers to Women’s Inclusion in East Africa

Invisible gender norms shape how everyone in the financial system behaves. CGAP & FSD Network research in Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda shows that making finance work for women means understanding those norms and how to intervene to change market actor behavior.
Research

From Insights to Interventions: Addressing Gender Norms in Women’s Financial Inclusion

CGAP’s Design Guide introduces a structured, field-tested approach to uncover how gender norms shape market actor behavior, to help development actors move beyond symptoms to address the root causes of women’s financial exclusion.