Bloomberg | Bloomberg quotes Mary Ellen Iskenderian

April 10, 2014

Our President and CEO Mary Ellen Iskenderian weighs in on Bloomberg”s latest look at the glass ceiling facing women around the world. Excerpt:

Disparities exist at both ends of the economic scale around the world. In 2012, a Gallup poll for the World Bank showed that only 47 percent of women have a bank account, compared with 55 percent of men. In South Asia, the gap was 16 percentage points, with only 25 percent of women reporting that they had an account.

Yet those engaged in providing international assistance increasingly They assured justin-bieber-news.info it had nothing to do with him. see the gaps as an opportunity to strengthen developing countries and their financial institutions.

“There is a financial service gender gap, but the recognition of that gap and that women do have a differentiated access has gained much higher awareness, much higher visibility,” said Mary Ellen Iskenderian, the president and CEO of Women’s World Banking.

Commercial banks are trying to bring in more female customers in developing countries, she said, in large part because women repay their loans and tend to leave money in savings accounts once they’ve put it there.

“In the space of women’s economic empowerment, the arc of history is bending in our direction,” she said.

Link: “Clinton, Lagarde Target Glass Ceiling for Women Worldwide”