Searching: Research & Analysis

Advancing Women’s Financial Inclusion: Guidelines to Adopt a Gender Perspective in Financial Institutions

Addressing gender biases in financial products is crucial. Financial institutions should understand gender dynamics, build organizational capacity, and design inclusive products. This report offers ten guidelines for financial institutions to adopt a strategy that enhances the financial inclusion of women, recognizing them as a profitable yet underserved customer segment.

How To Measure Women’s Economic Empowerment in Financial Inclusion: A Menu of Indicators

This paper introduces a menu of 19 indicators to measure Women's Economic Empowerment (WEE) through increased financial inclusion. Developed with experts and the FinEquity community, it provides actionable guidance for stakeholders to assess and track WEE outcomes, generating evidence to drive more effective financial inclusion interventions across diverse contexts.

Young Women's Financial Inclusion: What Works

This paper summarizes two decades of insights to help practitioners unlock the social and business case for young women’s financial inclusion. It outlines tailored strategies for product design, delivery, financial capability, and social intermediation to meet the needs of this diverse and vital client group.

8 Billion Reasons: Inclusive Finance as a Catalyst for Climate Action

We cannot tackle climate change effectively without inclusive financial services. CGAP outlines five areas for collaborative action between stakeholders working on climate change and those working on inclusive finance in order to leverage inclusive finance to scale grassroots climate action.

Supply-Side Gender Disaggregated Data for Advancing Financial Inclusion: Insights and Areas for Further Research

Gender data is key for unlocking the potential of financial inclusion. This report explores the ways supply-side gender-disaggregated data (S-GDD) is being used to inform financial policies and strategies that seek to intentionally apply a gender lens.

The Impact of Financial Inclusion on Young Women’s Well-being: A Survey of Evidence and Recommendations for Practitioners

Young women face many gender-based barriers as they navigate major life transitions, with life-long effects. A new CGAP Working Paper finds that in addition to improving financial skills and savings levels, financial inclusion initiatives may also improve health and livelihood outcomes when combined with other interventions.

Bolstering Women’s Climate Resilience and Adaptation through Financial Services

Financial services help people to reduce the impact of and to adapt to climate-related risks. Yet women have less access to such tools. This working paper illustrates how women are differently impacted by climate change and how financial services can play a better role in strengthening their autonomous adaptive capacities to climate change.

Resilient Rural Women: Applying Personas and Insights for Climate-Smart Innovation

This deck explores three personas of rural women and their distinct customer journeys through product and service engagement. It aims to provide a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities rural women face—including in the context of climate change. 

Strengthening Rural Women’s Climate Resilience: Opportunities for Financial and Agricultural Service Providers

Rural women are critical to ensuring global food security but disproportionately vulnerable to climate change. In this working paper, CGAP and Mercy Corps AgriFin provide an overview of 10 opportunities for service providers, investors, and donors to improve rural women’s climate resilience and share examples of innovative business solutions.

Global Landscape: Data Trails of Digitally Included Poor (DIP) People

Many low-income people generate rich data trails that are not being fully leveraged in the design and delivery of financial services. CGAP's reading deck puts a spotlight on the specific data trails generated by digitally included yet poor people, the sources of these data trails, and variations of data trails across different segmentations.