Welcome to the Reserve Bank of Fiji’s Public Awareness column. This article continues the series of articles on financial inclusion.
Women play an important role in financial inclusion. At the recent 2016 Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) Global Policy Forum (GPF) held in Nadi, one of the key discussion topics was gender. Despite the progress made in advancing financial inclusion globally, women remain disproportionately excluded from the formal financial system. According to the 2014 Global Findex, more than one billion women are still excluded from the financial system, and in terms of those that do have access, there is a 9% gender gap in account ownership across developing economies.
This gender gap has remained unchanged since 2011. However during the GPF, the AFI members made a global commitment known as the Denarau Action Plan to close the financial inclusion gender gap, noting that the goals of financial access, usage and quality should be pursued in parallel and in a responsible and sustainable manner.