THE success of the Ehsaas Savings Wallets pilot initiative for 7m of the poorest women registered as Kafaalat beneficiaries under the Ehsaas programme, and its future expansion, should go a long way in increasing the access of financially excluded and disadvantaged women to formal financial services. Women, particularly the ones from the marginalised segments of society, form the bulk of the financially and digitally excluded population in the country, and no effort — social or economic — to empower this segment of the disadvantaged populace can bear fruit without closing the widening gender gap in the use of a range of savings, insurance, credit, payment and other financial services.

According to data, only a fifth of the country’s adult population is linked up with formal financial services in spite of the early adoption of policies supporting the microfinance sector and branchless banking as well as a national financial inclusion strategy launched by the central bank in 2015. Although the ‘enabling environment’ did help to significantly boost the number of bank account holders, it also increased the gender gap. A study revealed that in 2014, 21pc men had accounts, which increased by 13 percentage points to 34pc in 2017. In contrast, the percentage of women with accounts had increased by just two percentage points from 5pc to 7pc in these years, showing that men are nearly five times more likely to have an account as compared to women. Studies indicate that the gender gap in financial services’ accessibility exists across all demographics — poverty, education, geography, age and marital status. Even wealthy, urban and educated women have reported registering bank accounts less frequently than poor, rural men. Supportive government policies and initiatives like Ehsaas Savings Wallets are rightly considered critical for women’s financial inclusion. But, at the same time, we also need to break down the cultural barriers hampering women’s access to financial services. It is difficult, if not impossible, to pull families out of poverty without encouraging the financial inclusion of women.

Published in Dawn, May 26th, 2021