The Economic Empowerment Barometer
Are your financial products actually improving women’s lives? The Economic Empowerment Barometer helps you answer that question.
Are your financial products actually improving women's lives?
The Economic Empowerment Barometer helps you answer that question. Developed by Women’s World Banking, this practical, standardized tool measures whether women are earning more, building resilience, gaining confidence, and increasing their influence over financial decisions.
Whether you’re a financial institution, investor, donor, policymaker, or researcher, the Barometer helps you generate credible evidence, strengthen decision-making, and understand what truly drives women’s economic opportunity.
WHY THIS MATTERS NOW
Access is only the beginning.
More women have access to financial services than ever before. But access alone doesn’t tell us whether women are increasing their incomes, building financial resilience, or creating lasting economic opportunity.
Without that evidence, it’s difficult to know which products are creating meaningful change, where investments are having the greatest impact, or how to improve financial solutions over time.
The Economic Empowerment Barometer helps organizations move beyond measuring access to understanding outcomes—so you can make better decisions, strengthen products and programs, and demonstrate real impact.
What you’ll gain
- Measure outcomes beyond access and usage by understanding changes in women’s income, resilience, confidence, and decision-making.
- Strengthen products and programs with insights into what is—and isn’t—working for women.
- Generate credible evidence to demonstrate impact to investors, donors, regulators, and other stakeholders.
- Benchmark progress over time using a standardized framework.
- Turn data into action with practical insights that improve products, investments, and policies.
FROM DATA TO ACTION
Three segments, one clear framework
The Economic Empowerment Barometer classifies results across three stages of economic empowerment.
This framework helps organizations benchmark progress, identify where support is most needed, and understand which products and interventions are delivering the strongest outcomes for women.
EMPOWERED
Limited financial security and restricted agency.
ADVANCING
Growing financial capability, confidence, and influence.
VULNERABLE
Strong financial resilience and greater decision-making power.
WHO IT’S FOR
Built for every partner in the ecosystem
Together, these dimensions provide a practical, holistic view of empowerment grounded in women’s lived experiences.
Financial Services Providers
Design products that deliver better outcomes.
Donors
Understand what creates lasting impact.
Impact Investors
Measure the outcomes behind your investments.
Policymakers & Researchers
Build stronger evidence for better policy.
NGOs & Support Organizations
Strengthen programs with better insight.
Not sure where your organization fits? Contact our team.
WHAT THE BAROMETER MEASURES
Four dimensions of economic empowerment
The Economic Empowerment Barometer captures four dimensions of women’s economic empowerment.
Material Change
Measures whether women are building greater financial security through higher income, increased savings, and stronger resilience to economic shocks.
Cognitive Change
Assesses whether women have the knowledge, skills, and capability to confidently use financial products and services.
Perceptual Change
Captures women’s confidence in their financial future, including their sense of security, preparedness, and optimism.
Relational Change
Measures whether women have greater influence over financial decisions, household resources, and economic priorities.
The Survey
The Economic Empowerment Barometer includes a streamlined 25-question survey designed to capture key indicators of women’s economic empowerment.
The Field Guide
The Field Guide provides step-by-step support to customize the survey, design a sample, collect high-quality data, interpret results, and translate findings into action.
A practical tool designed for real-world implementation
It is short and practical to deploy, designed for comparability across markets, flexible enough to customize by context, and suitable for in-person, phone, digital, or in-app data collection.
Turn Data Into Better Decisions
Collecting data is only the first step.
Women’s World Banking can help you analyze Barometer results, identify where women are progressing—or where they remain vulnerable—and translate findings into practical recommendations for products, programs, investments, and policy.
COMING SOON
The Economic Empowerment Index
Built on Barometer data, the Economic Empowerment Index will provide the first global benchmark for tracking women’s economic empowerment outcomes across markets, helping organizations understand how they compare and where greater progress is possible.
Ready to measure what matters?
Whether you’re developing financial products, evaluating investments, designing programs, or shaping policy, the Economic Empowerment Barometer helps you understand what is truly changing in women’s lives.
Download the Economic Empowerment Barometer today and start measuring the outcomes that matter.
