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Pathways to Financial Inclusion for Young Women: Opportunities for Financial Service Providers and Funders

Based on research in Ghana and Tanzania, this Focus Note presents key opportunities for FSPs and funders to meet the real financial needs of young women aged 15-24.

Building Rural Women’s Climate Resilience: Seven Business Drivers Delivering Commercial Value

As climate pressures rise, strengthening rural women’s resilience is critical for their livelihoods and for the long-term viability of the rural businesses that serve them. Through ABERA (Accelerating Business to Empower Rural Women in Agriculture), a CGAP and IDH collaboration, this paper identifies seven practical business drivers that simultaneously strengthen rural women’s climate resilience and business performance.

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.

Diagnosing Gender Norms in the Financial Market System: A Practical Guide

CGAP’s Diagnostic Guide helps development actors move beyond symptoms to address the root causes of women’s financial exclusion. This guide introduces a structured, field-tested approach to uncover how gender norms shape market actor behavior and offers practitioners a powerful set of tools for examining norms-driven constraints and identifying high impact intervention points.

Invisible Barriers: How Gender Norms Impact Financial Inclusion

Gender norms shape the behavior of financial service providers, regulators, and communities, often limiting women’s access to and use of financial services. This Focus Note presents a practical framework, based on diagnostics in Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda, that classifies gender norms by their strength and prevalence and proposes tailored strategies for addressing them.

Gender Norms and Financial Regulation: The Case for Gender Lens Regulatory Analysis

To advance women’s financial inclusion, financial regulators must recognize that men and women experience the financial sector differently. This working paper provides a framework to assess how regulation can impact men and women differently. It aims to motivate regulators to move from gender-blind, to gender intentional approaches.

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.