What is it about?
Women and men do not always have equal access to or use of financial services. This study examines whether the quality of a country's governance can help reduce these gender differences. We develop a new measure of national governance quality and examine gender gaps in several aspects of financial inclusion, including financial institution account ownership, debit or credit card ownership, saving, borrowing, and digital payments. We find that improvements in national governance quality are generally associated with smaller gender gaps in financial inclusion. However, the relationship differs considerably depending on a country's level of economic development.
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Why is it important?
Financial inclusion can provide people with greater opportunities to save, borrow, make payments, and participate in economic activity. Yet women continue to face disadvantages in accessing and using financial services in many countries. Our findings show that national governance may play an important role in reducing these gender gaps. In high-income countries, better governance is associated with greater gender equality across all of the financial inclusion measures we examine. In less-developed countries, however, this relationship is substantially weaker or sometimes absent. These findings suggest that improving governance can contribute to greater financial equality, but governance improvements alone may not be sufficient in countries where other economic, institutional, or social barriers remain.
Perspectives
The motivation for this study was to better understand why gender inequality in financial inclusion remains substantial across many countries despite efforts to expand access to financial services. We were particularly interested in whether the broader quality of a country's governance helps create an environment in which women and men can participate more equally in the financial system. An important finding is that the relationship between governance and gender equality is not uniform across countries. Better governance is associated with more equitable financial inclusion particularly in high-income economies, while its effect is much more limited in less-developed economies. I hope this study encourages further research into how governance, economic development, and other country-specific conditions interact in efforts to reduce gender inequality in financial inclusion.
Dr. Hongbok Lee
Western Illinois University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Gender inequality in financial inclusion across the globe: Does national governance quality matter?, Managerial Finance, March 2025, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/mf-09-2024-0663.
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