This year, the campaign theme for the International Women's Day is #BreakTheBias. Despite all the progress made towards accomplishing gender parity, the gender gap remains and is observed in various forms in almost all professions world wide.
Women’s meaningful ‘emancipation’ is embedded in their financial independence. Financial empowerment will help bridge gender gap fast. However, globally, 35 per cent of women are estimated to be financially excluded.
Lack of education is one of the major factors hindering women’s access to institutional finance. Without adequate literacy, it is very difficult for men and women to understand and appreciate the role of formal finance in their lives. This often results in their reluctance to avail themselves of the savings and loan products from financial institutors.
Some level of basic education is essential to enhance financial literacy. However, the scenario on female literacy is not encouraging.
According to the UNESCO’s eAtlas of Gender Inequality in Education, globally, about 10 per cent of all girls roughly between 6 and 11 years are denied the right to education, compared to eight per cent of all boys. If the current trend continues, almost 16 million girls between 6 and 11 years will never get an opportunity to attend a primary school compared to about 8 million boys.
The second hindrance is the practice of getting the female children married before they are economically independent , often against their wishes. This, along with early motherhood, makes them entirely dependent on the husband or in-law’s family.
So if the husband loses job or suffers a crop failure, his wife’s life is financially doomed.
Third, in many countries, women do not have the necessary ID proof without which they cannot access financial institutions.
Fourth, in many developing and low-income countries, women are not allowed to go to a bank which is generally staffed with more men. Women also often do not have control over the assets they own as they are controlled by her male relatives.
Fifth, the inheritance and marriage laws are another stumbling block. In a patriarchal society, it is the sons who inherit the ancestral property. However in many countries now, laws have been changed or are being changed to empower women.
Finally, since women lack financial independence, it is difficult for the credit information bureaus to prepare financial history of women which restricts financial institutions from lending to women.
Levelling the field
However, there has been some progress in recent times on financial inclusion of women. But this progress has been uneven and geographically skewed.
So improving women’s literacy levels must be the first priority for enhancing their financial inclusion.
Secondly crediting women’s salaries directly to their bank accounts will increase their financial empowerment. . Here, the government’s efforts in moving towards DBT is noteworthy.
Another noteworthy effort is the introduction of the Aadhaar card. The government’s launching of exclusive bank accounts for girl children, e.g., Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana is equally laudable. Some banks even offer concessional rate of interest for housing and education loans availed of by women.
In situations, where women cannot go to bank offices, agent-driven banking can help them. Moreover, with the ubiquity of digital banking, the work becomes further hassle-free.
However, implementation of progressive laws is often not easy. Many archaic laws have to be replaced with laws which are in consonance with contemporary realities and most importantly, the new or amended laws have to be enforced appropriately by officials who are not biased against women.
So awareness plays a huge role here. Women have to be made aware of their rights to access financial services. There must be greater awareness and enlightenment among men too to bring about greater gender equality.
In this context, NGOs can be of great help.
Banks should hold special campaigns for opening accounts for women. Postmen who make door-to-door must be tapped for spreading awareness about opening accounts by women with Post Offices and also motivate them. Financial literacy or awareness will also protect women from the clutches of fraudulent money-raising schemes.
All these, combined with the availability of relevant data and information, will further help in designing tailor-made financial products and services for women which will, in turn, augment their financial inclusion.
The writer is a former senior economist of SBI. Views expressed are personal.