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MITIGATING THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON GAINS IN FINANCIAL INCLUSION
INTEGRATION OF INTERSECTIONALITY AND GENDER INCLUSIVE FINANCE Reaffirmation towards leaving no one behind and integrating disadvantaged groups into financial sector strategies will be key during recovery. While the global pandemic has helped spur financial inclusion in some sectors, it also provides an urgent reminder that much more work remains to be done. Financial networks can only be leveraged meaningfully for recovery if all vulnerable populations have access as well as the right products, services and skills to use on an ongoing basis.
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1 Simplifying and enhancing women’s access to identity documents and working with communities to overcome restrictive social and cultural norms can enable women to have the necessary documents to open an account and also the permission of their family and community to do so. Allowing alternative forms of identity documents can also offer the same opportunity to women who cannot access formal identity documents.
There is a risk that policymakers, in the wake of the pandemic, become reticent to reach the most financially excluded because directing emergency funds through digital financial networks can be so much more costeffective than alternative channels. Such behavior would exacerbate existing inequalities in income, education, gender and location because financially excluded parts of the population are also likely to be most in need of state support. However, the COVID-19 pandemic presented the opportunity to TAKE A FRESH LOOK AT FINANCIAL INCLUSION FOR WOMEN AND GIRLS and identify existing and new prospects that regulators and financial policymakers can act upon. Some of these prospects are listed below.
(Photo by Sumit Saraswat/Shutterstock)
2 Enhancing the availability and opportunity to engage with gender transformative financial and digital literacy will help risk-aware women understand the risk versus opportunities of engaging with new products and services that they are presented with.
(Photo by i_am_zews0/Shutterstock)
