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

Executive Summary

While constraints to women's financial inclusion (WFI) are well known, to effectively tackle these constraints it is necessary to understand why women are excluded. What are the root causes—that is, what causes people and institutions to behave the way they do and how do these behaviors lead to women's financial exclusion? To fully address women's exclusion, funders and market facilitators must first determine and understand root causes before intervening to effectively address the resulting constraints.

A subset of social norms, gender norms dictate what women can and cannot do, shaping their ability to access, use, and benefit from financial services. These beliefs about women's roles influence not only women's behavior but the behavior of all market actors in the financial system, including individual behavior as well as institutional practice—both of which are guided by these same underlying beliefs about women's roles and capabilities. For example, norms may dictate that women should not own land or large assets. This results in their inability to meet collateral requirements and thus excludes them from borrowing amounts large enough to expand their businesses. Understanding how gender norms influence the financial market system is key to designing effective and sustainable interventions to increase WFI.

Even as financial inclusion interventions have focused on increasing women's access to services, meaningful economic agency remains constrained by prevailing social expectations about gender roles. The relationship between norm change and women's economic empowerment (WEE) is iterative and mutually reinforcing; as norms begin to shift, women gain greater economic opportunities, which in turn can accelerate further norm change in a positive feedback loop. However, these changes do not spontaneously occur. They require deliberate and supportive interventions to initiate and sustain progress.

The tools and approach outlined in this Technical Guide fill a gap in the current landscape, providing the foundation funders and facilitators need to effectively design interventions that address the root causes rather than symptoms of women's financial exclusion. It is only by considering the impact of gender norms on market actor behavior that development actors will be able to sustainably influence positive change in the financial market system, resulting in a more inclusive and beneficial system for women.

The guide is part of the CGAP series described in the Preface. It covers Steps 2 through 4 of the project cycle, providing detailed guidance on how to use findings from a market system gender norms diagnostic to create a vision for the future, to design and effectively intervene to change market actor behavior to address constraints to WFI, and to assess change and adapt.

This Technical Guide provides:

• Tools for applying gender norms diagnostic findings to develop a vision for the future. By examining the strength and prevalence of different norms, the evolution of and exceptions to each norm, and how these norms influence the behaviors of different market actors, development actors develop a better understanding of the root causes of the various constraints to WFI. This in turn allows them to develop a vision: a summary statement of what the future will look like once market actor behavior changes and the related constraints to WFI have been addressed. By truly understanding the root causes of why women are excluded or underserved, including the different experiences of various segments of women depending on their income, age, marital status, and geography, it is possible to identify how behaviors need to change to more effectively and sustainably include women and, importantly, how best to influence that change.
• Tools for designing effective interventions. Once a vision has been developed, development actors are guided to examine the incentives and capacities underlying the current behavior of market actors, determine the desired behavior of the different types of market actors in a system that fully includes women, and then ascertain how to support increased capacity and incentives to change these market actors' behavior. Doing so not only informs how best to intervene to influence behavior change but with whom to partner and which, if any, specialist firms will be engaged.
• Guidance on how to measure and assess change resulting from the intervention. Through monitoring and by tracking indicators, development actors can determine whether changes are happening as expected and, if not, what revisions need to be made to the intervention. Different activities may be required—or new partners; or perhaps changes are happening but slower than anticipated so the timeline needs revision. This process of "adaptive management" is fundamental to the success of the intervention.
• A template and example demonstrating how to use the tools. Appendix A provides a template development actors can use to design interventions based on findings from their own diagnostic and their associated project objectives. Throughout the guide an example from Financial Sector Deepening (FSD) Uganda is provided, showing the reader how to complete each of the tables provided in the template.

Developed through practical application and testing in Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda, the guide provides the required tools and guidance for development actors to effectively apply the diagnostic findings, develop their vision, and design interventions based on a deep understanding of the financial market system and why women are being excluded or underserved.