Gender Barriers to Banking Exist Worldwide; Gap between men and women larger in developing world.
Byline: Leora Klapper, Lead Economist Finance and Private Sector Research Team, World Bank
Synopsis: A Gallup/World Bank study reveals 55% of men and 47% of women have a bank account at a formal institution worldwide, underscoring the gender gap in financial inclusion.
This article is part of an ongoing series on global financial inclusion based on data collected for the new World Bank Global Financial Inclusion (Global Findex) database.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Worldwide, 55% of men and 47% of women have a bank account at a formal financial institution, according to a recent Gallup/World Bank study. Gender gaps like this exist in all regions, but women in South Asia and the Middle East and North Africa are among the most likely worldwide to trail men terms of having a formal bank account.
Divides such as these underscore the need for timely, high-quality data to evaluate and strengthen public policies aimed at improving women's lives, the focus of an event last week at Gallup that featured remarks from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and World Bank President Jim Yong Kim.
These results come from a global study of financial inclusion, which measures how adults in 148 economies save, borrow, make payments, and manage risk. Gallup collected the data in 2011 for the World Bank Global Financial Inclusion (Global Findex) database, which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The database is the first source of hard data for examining how women make financial transactions, both inside and outside the formal financial sector.
Gender Gap Evident Across Income Groups
The gender gap in account penetration is larger in the developing world (nine percentage points) than in high-income economies (five points). It is larger still among adults living on less than $2 a day. In this group, women are 28 percentage points less likely than men to have a formal account.
The gender gap persists across income groups within economies as well. In the developing world, there is a constant gap of six to nine points across within-economy income quintiles. Even among the richest 20% of earners within developing economies, the gender gap in the ownership of formal accounts averages nine points.
Many Women Unbanked Because Family Members Already Have Accounts
Among all adults without an account, the most common reason cited for not having one was not having enough money to use an account. Among unbanked men, the next most commonly cited reason was...
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