Championing the Empowered Woman
Women’s World Banking is dedicated to ensuring the future of the economically empowered woman. She has access to financial and technological tools in her own name and is comfortable using them. She is making financial decisions for her household. She makes sure her kids stay in school and she knows her financial future is safe. She votes. If she’s a business owner, she is treated as one. She supports her community, invests in her family and she helps to boost the economy for all of us.
Without her, there’s no inclusive economic growth.Join us to activate an economy that works for her.
Why Does It Matter?
Today, nearly one billion women around the world are unserved or underserved by the formal financial sector and unable to reach their full economic potential. If you brought all of these women together, they would make up the third-largest country in the world.
There is an untapped $700 billion annual revenue opportunity for banks and other financial service providers if they did nothing more than provide financial services to women at the same rate they are provided to men. If women participated equally, $12 trillion could be added to global annual GDP by 2025. Financial inclusion is not just a driver of economic growth, but inclusive growth.
What’s more, millions of women in developing countries are micro-entrepreneurs, and that number is growing. Yet, 70% of women entrepreneurs report inadequate access to the capital necessary to grow their businesses.
Turning Insights Into Action
Investing in businesses to impel them to take women’s leadership, economic empowerment, women customers seriously.
Learn MoreMotivating policymakers to design and implement inclusive financial policies.
Learn MoreAccelerating gender equality and women’s leadership in financial services and regulatory institutions.
Learn MoreDesigning and deploying in-market relevant products and services for low-income women.
Learn MoreDriving greater access to financing for women-owned businesses.
25 Million Women and Counting
To date, we have reached more than 25 million women in emerging markets through our programs, helping to change not only their lives but the lives of their households, communities, and businesses.
What do we mean by reached?
Women’s World Banking uses the term “reached” to describe any woman who benefits from our programs to enhance financial inclusion, defined as giving women the choice to access and capability to use financial services. This includes:
- Women who have access to new or enhanced products or services, delivered directly in partnership with financial service providers.
- Women projected to benefit from products, services, or policies that deepen their financial inclusion, through investment and influence with financial service providers and policymakers.