The Next Chapter for Women’s Financial Inclusion: Moving Toward a Visible Step-Change

While access to financial services has served as a foundational step toward financial inclusion for women, progress is far from uniform for two key reasons. First, progress around access remains uneven and incomplete, with stark regional variations and nearly 800 million women in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) still unbanked. Second, the simple opening of a bank account has not automatically led to women’s deeper engagement, trust, and confidence in the financial system. These gaps have thereby created an uneven landscape of success for women’s financial inclusion (WFI). Persistent barriers—such as entrenched gender norms, lack of gender-disaggregated data and insights, lack of customized financial solutions for different segments of women, and fragmented, disconnected sectoral efforts—continue to impede cohesive progress in the market and prevent the impactful step change needed to advance WFI.

This paper presents CGAP’s gender conceptual framework that offers a new vision for the next chapter of women's financial inclusion (WFI) through an intentional whole-of-market response that is rooted in all actors across the financial ecosystem serving women more — and better. It outlines the importance of an intentional whole-of-market response centered around five WFI levers: establishing gender-disaggregated data infrastructure, adopting enabling policies and regulations, driving inclusive investment environments, addressing gender norms, and aligning public and private sector goals. Together, these actions can bring about meaningful and lasting change.