The growing gender gap in financial inclusion over the last five years has led to a renewed interest and resurgence of evidence on the importance of gender sensitive product design to address specific demand and supply side barriers faced by women. While many of these latest initiatives are showing early signs of success, less has been done in the financial inclusion space to address the social and cultural constraints that work to reinforce women’s exclusion from the formal financial sector.

Social norms around women’s mobility, levels of financial literacy, ownership rights, intra household bargaining power, as well as access to new technology such as mobile phones and the internet influence women’s financial behavior and can limit the benefits derived from available financial services. This webinar will showcase emerging efforts by practitioners around social norms that affect women’s financial participation thereby limiting their economic empowerment and discuss the types of partnerships needed with a range of market actors to bring about transformative change for women’s greater financial inclusion.