Exploring the gender gap in financial inclusion

: evidence from the 2017 world bank global findex data

Abstract

Examining gender disparities in financial inclusion is crucial due to its direct impact on economic development, poverty reduction, and social equity. Ensuring equal access to financial services strengthens women's economic power, enhances their participation in the economy, and helps reduce broader socioeconomic inequalities. This study investigates the gender gap in financial inclusion by analysing the 2017 World Bank Global Findex database, which contains more than 120,000 individuals across 120 countries. We focus on two measures of financial inclusion: account ownership and mobile money account ownership. Moreover, we investigate whether societal level gender equality, captured by the Gender Gap Index (GGI) plays an important role in shaping the gender gap in financial inclusion. The results show a statistically significant gender gap in financial inclusion. After controlling for individual characteristics and country-fixed effects, we find that women are, on average, 3.6 percentage points less likely than men to own an account at a financial institution and 2.8 percentage points less likely to own a mobile money account. These gender gaps remain robust across different model specifications and estimation methods. In addition, we provide evidence that greater societal gender equality is associated with a smaller gender gap in account ownership at financial institutions. However, the impact of the GGI on the gender gap in mobile money account ownership is not statistically significant.

Date of Award	29 Oct 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Zahide Eylem Gevrek (Supervisor)