Searching: Blogs

Smart Fields, Strong Women: Data and AI in Rural India

In rural India, digital tools are bridging the gender gap in finance. By using satellite data and AI to track farm productivity, new agri-tech models help women farmers build credit histories and access the resources needed for climate resilience.

Mexico's Collective Shift: Redefining Approaches to Women's Inclusion

What does it take to move an entire financial sector toward gender equality? In Mexico, the answer is emerging: shared accountability, institutional reform, and collective action.

She Saves: Designing Savings Products That Work for Young Women

For young women with irregular incomes and limited buffers, savings rather than borrowing is the preferred way to build assets and manage uncertainty. The question is not whether to offer savings, but how to design products that fit young women’s realities.

Young Women Speak: Lessons on Inclusive Finance from Ghana & Tanzania

Based on research and experimentation in Ghana and Tanzania, CGAP identified three opportunities for providers and funders to help close the gender gap that widens between ages 15–24. Broaden on-ramps to the financial system, prioritize secure savings over credit, and protect young women’s financial gains with better life and health insurance.

Mapping Credit Gender Gaps With Regulatory Data in Rwanda

Using disaggregated data—by gender, age, and location—can improve financial inclusion. Using CGAP's pilot with NBR in Rwanda as an example, we show how segmented insights help regulators and providers identify gaps, reduce bias, and better serve vulnerable groups.

Women’s Financial Empowerment at the Heart of a Developed India

As India charts its course toward Viksit Bharat 2047, it will need a financial system that not only includes women but also strengthens their economic power by giving them control over money, decisions, and assets at every life stage.

What’s Driving Quiet Gains for Young Women’s Use of Financial Services?

Young women’s use of financial services jumped 9 points since 2021. Findex 2025 data suggests government transfers now play a bigger role in shaping young women’s financial behaviors, narrowing the gender gap despite stable education and wage trends.

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.

How Morocco’s New WFI Coalition Redefines Business-as-Usual

Morocco’s Women’s Financial Inclusion Coalition is a bold, coordinated effort to close the country’s gender gap in finance by aligning public and private actors, linking policy to practice, and driving systemic, lasting change for women.

Beyond Borders: Expanding Financial Inclusion Through e-Commerce

Cross-border e-commerce enables women to expand their markets, reach new clients, and trade in greater volumes, while doing business remotely, saving time and improving efficiency. These transactions create a financial footprint that can help women qualify for loans, insurance, and other financial products.

How Has Regulating Digital Lending Enhanced Women’s Credit in Indonesia?

Intentionally embedding gender considerations into Indonesia’s peer-to-peer (P2P) and other fintech regulations and guidance could unlock new finance pathways for women entrepreneurs to access the finance they need to grow and thrive.

Women Bear the Cost of Underutilizing FATF’s Risk-Based Approach

The recently revised FATF Standards create new opportunities to apply proportionate AML/CFT measures that recognize women’s generally lower risk, helping close the gender gap in financial inclusion if policymakers act intentionally.

From Access to Agency: The Next Chapter in Women’s Financial Inclusion

Despite global progress, meaningful gender gaps in account ownership still persist in 65 economies. Our latest Findex blog unpacks new data on women’s financial inclusion and identifies the opportunities ahead.

Building Resilience: Women, Solar Energy & India’s Turmeric Economy

Women do 80% of the labor in India’s turmeric value chain, much of it grueling and manual. Solar dryers and peelers could ease this burden, improve quality, raise incomes, and build climate resilience with support from green finance tools.

Four Ways Funders Can Support Climate-Smart Women’s Financial Inclusion

Inclusive finance is a critical, yet underutilized, tool for supporting low-income women’s climate adaptation, and funders can play a key role by helping FSPs overcome key barriers to delivering climate-smart, gender-responsive financial products and services.

How Can Financial Authorities Use Gender Data to Fulfill Diverse Mandates?

As the financial landscape grows more complex, integrating gender into regulatory data will help financial sector authorities fulfill their mandates more effectively, contributing to a more inclusive, responsible, safe, and sustainable financial sector.

Financial Services are the Key to Gender-Inclusive Carbon Markets

As carbon markets evolve from niche climate interventions into a multi-billion-dollar industry, a critical truth is emerging: gender inclusion is no longer optional. It is essential to the permanence, equity, and scalability of carbon projects.

Implementing Gender-Smart Strategies: A Guide for Financial Providers

Financial institutions often neglect the specific needs of women, despite evidence showing women are valuable clients. We advocate for a gender-sensitive approach to financial inclusion to address these issues and improve women's economic potential.

Unpacking Effects of Gender Norms on Women's Financial Lives in Uganda

How do gender norms impact not just women’s behavior, but the behavior of all market actors in the financial system? Recent findings from Uganda offer some insights.

The Hidden Costs of Forex Funding: Do Women Pay a Higher Price?

Smaller lenders serve women borrowers best but face high costs, forex risk, and limited scale. In light of this fact, donors and DFIs must expand local currency funding and strengthen risk management to close the gender gap in finance.