Explore the latest global and regional insights from Women’s World Banking’s work in policy, leadership, women’s entrepreneurship, gender lens investing, and more.
By Louiza Kaluna, Program Coordinator, Leadership and Diversity If women were full economic participants, global GDP would rise by 26%. Amid changing political landscapes globally given national elections in 74 countries in 2025, women’s financial inclusion represents a valuable opportunity. The financial services sector stands as a constant force for
By Dr. Sonja Kelly, Global Head, Women’s World Banking Institute Financial sector regulators have much to consider when it comes to women’s digital financial inclusion: How can we narrow the gender divide in access and use of services? How can we reduce fraud in an increasingly complex digital environment? How
The 2024 Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) Global Policy Forum, held in El Salvador between 2 – 5 September, was a week of rich discussion and collaboration. The highlight of the event for Women’s World Banking, was the Leadership & Diversity Program for Regulators (LDR) graduation ceremony on the morning
How Women’s World Banking’s new TechEquity Program for women policymakers, regulators, and supervisors is leveraging new research to tackle wicked industry problems By Sonja Kelly (Vice President, Research & Advocacy) and Elizabeth Ingerfield (Manager, Leadership & Diversity Programs) Tech jobs are not a tool for exclusion—they are a radical new
Scroll down to download the case study. In 2022, the fourth cohort graduated from our Leadership and Diversity Program for Regulators (the LDR program). For this case study, we interviewed three participants who share their experience of developing a gender inclusive policy initiative during the program. The LDR program, created
Women’s representation in leadership positions remains a pressing issue globally. According to OMFIF’s 2023 Gender Balance Index, at the current rate of progress, it would take over a century to achieve gender parity in leadership roles for central banks and major financial institutions. Despite significant advancements in recent years, women
6 Questions with 6 Female Fintech Founders By Marina Dimova (Director, Financial Industry & Network Advocacy) & Dan Truong (Marketing Specialist, Financial Industry & Network Advocacy) Although women make up nearly 30% of the fintech workforce, they continue to earn only 2% of all venture capital, despite evidence indicating that
The Leadership and Diversity Program for Regulators (LDR) is a multi-week learning program taught by Women’s World Banking and Oxford University’s Saïd Business School. It equips senior officials and high-potential women leaders from government ministries, central banks and regulators in emerging markets with the skills to create an enabling environment
By the Leadership & Diversity Team: Francesca Brown, Sarah Buitoni, Elizabeth Ingerfield, & Nana Ampah On the 5th and 6th September our Leadership & Diversity Team attended the 2022 AFI Global Policy Forum in Jordan. Here the team met with our 2022 Leadership & Diversity Program for Regulators (LDR) participants
Nearly one billion women remain outside the formal financial system, unable to participate in or benefit from financial growth and prosperity. Despite advances for women in recent decades, the gender gap in financial inclusion stubbornly remains at 9% across the emerging markets, requiring greater efforts from financial service providers and
As part of our Leadership & Diversity programs, Women’s World Banking tracks the career paths of high-potential women leaders, both to enhance our future program offerings for new generations of leaders and to share their experiences with others. With funding support from Credit Suisse, Women’s World Banking conducted case study
In financial institutions around the world, women continue to be underrepresented in senior leadership, with only 14 holding the governorship at a Central Bank. Previously in this series, Women’s World Banking spoke with the Governors of the Central Banks of Malaysia, San Marino, Serbia, and Seychelles about navigating success and
Across the globe, central banks and other regulatory agencies face a persistent and significant gender gap in leadership. Today, the number of women serving as Governor—the most senior position—at a Central Bank totals only 14, illustrating a clear need for greater diversity in leadership. In Part I of this Q&A,
Whether in the day-to-day context or amid the upheaval wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, the struggles of leadership are universal. For women, who continue to battle gender stereotypes in the workplace and shoulder a disproportionate share of care responsibilities (among other obstacles), the choice to exercise leadership comes with additional
Over the last six years, Women’s World Banking has supported leaders of financial service providers (FSPs) through our Leadership & Diversity for Innovation Program (LDIP). The LDIP seeks to develop the skills of senior executives and high-potential women leaders to enable them to successfully serve low-income women, while charting a
By Victoria Johnson, Research Associate and Sonja Kelly, Director of Research and Advocacy Investing in women is smart business. Data shows that having women leaders improves financial performance, increases sales, leads to better decision-making, and creates a more inclusive corporate culture. On the other hand, women customers are often underserved,
Why do we focus on women as both leaders and customers? Organizations that invest in women leaders invest in women clients. With this connection between women leaders and customers in mind, Women’s World Banking conducted an in-depth case study of AMK Cambodia, or Angkor Mikroheranhvatho Kampuchea Co., one of the
By Mary Ellen Iskenderian, President & CEO of Women’s World Banking This year’s theme for International Women’s Day is #EachforEqual, calling all of us to join together in building a gender equal world. As the IWD website notes, it’s time to make room for “the gender equal boardroom, a gender
All of us at Women’s World Banking are devastated to learn the sad news of Viji Das’ passing. Throughout her life she was a strong, clear and brave voice for women’s empowerment at a time when it was hard, and sometimes even dangerous, for such views to be expressed. Indian
On January 15 UN Women, in partnership with the governments of Mexico and France, announced coalition themes supporting the 2020 Generation Equality Forums to be held in Mexico City in May and Paris in July 2020. The announcement is intended as a catalyst for accelerated progress against gender equality goals.
Intro clip (Dr. Tosan Oruwariye): When you have an idea, you really need to have passion for that idea and know the mission. What you’re trying to do if you’re mission driven. Because there’ll be shocks and bumps along the way. That’s guaranteed. So, you need to be persistent. You
“You get to hear what works for other organizations, other commercial banks like ourselves, and get to meet up with Fintechs. A lot of good ideas: It’s mind-blowing. The perspective that Women’s World Banking itself brings in, it’s a complete solution.” For low-income women who are running their own business
Elisabeth Ballreich, Principal Investment Officer & Operations Manager at Women’s World Banking, is featured in this Lëtzebuerger Journal interview during European Microfinance Week.
Intro clip (Dr. Monique Nsanzabaganwa): If I have this opportunity, let’s use it not for my own privilege, my own benefit, to get a nice salary, drive a nice car, and that’s it. So, I have really to see what else I can do to uplift them knowing that as
Intro clip (Viji Das): Women should get the kind of a safe space to contribute to their society. And they have to have equal access to all the resources. This is my dream. TRANSCRIPT Karen Miller, Host: Women’s World Banking is bringing you a series of podcasts about trailblazing
Intro clip (Samit Ghosh): In Bengali there is a song, which is a very famous song, which is “Ekla Chalo Re.” Which means be ready to walk alone, even if no one hears your song. Just walk alone and go achieve your purpose. TRANSCRIPT Karen Miller, Host: Women’s World
MEDIA RELEASE April 2, 2019 Contact: Karen Miller, +1 212 556 3149 or klm@womensworldbanking.org Women’s World Banking and Alliance for Financial Inclusion gather Central Bankers and Senior Policymakers from around the world to kick off its inaugural Leadership and Diversity Program for Regulators Oxford, England – Women’s World
In the face of a stubborn gender gap across industries, Women’s World Banking is advocating for more sponsors on this year’s International Women’s Day.
In the our latest podcast, we explore lessons learned from building gender-diverse teams externally and how we strive for gender diversity within Women’s World Banking.
Policymakers have the opportunity to play game changer in driving women’s financial inclusion efforts. However, a strong, gender-diverse team within the regulatory body needs to be in place to amplify these efforts. Women’s World Banking and AFI’s Leadership & Diversity for Regulators program provides the tools to design inclusive policies
Program supporter Credit Suisse reflects on the evolution of the Leadership and Diversity for Innovation program to better build diverse institutions.
How does Leadership and Change Management help financial service providers serve low-income women profitably and sustainably?
Mary Ellen Iskenderian on new evidence from the Business and Sustainable Development Commission that companies with gender diverse leadership perform better.
The comprehensive leadership training program we delivered for NBS Bank reinforced the institutional “must-haves” for programs to have a long-term impact.
Google Doodle made Women’s World Banking co-founder Esther Ocloo famous on April 18, 2017. What part did she play in our story?
Our Management Development Program at NBS Bank (Malawi) helped managers understand their core values and leverage their differences to better work together to serve women.
An interview with our President and CEO, Mary Ellen Iskenderian.
We sought to examine the current state of gender-diverse leadership around the world to see just how far the needle has moved and what remains to be done.
Using Martha Chen’s Empowerment Framework, we evaluated whether our leadership training for low-income women had empowerment effects to their lives.
Leadership & Diversity for Innovation Program alumni share how supportive training helped them become transformational women leaders in their institutions.
Our research on leadership and diversity in financial services is highlighted.
Despite all the evidence that women leaders are good for business, what keeps more women from reaching the top tiers of their organizations?
Women’s World Banking staff attended the most recent Leadership Conference, hosted by The Wharton School of Business. What were the lessons they took home?
Our President and CEO, Mary Ellen Iskenderian extends birthday wishes to one of the “founding mothers” of Women’s World Banking, Swiss entrepreneur and women’s advocate on her 85th birthday.
Our President and CEO comments on the UK Treasury’s “Women In Finance Charter” and what it represents in the move to increase gender diversity in the leadership ranks of financial institutions.
Findings and experiences on advancing gender diversity in corporate leadership from Women’s World Banking, Bloomberg’s Gender Equality Index and Deutsche Bank.
In a conversation moderated by Women’s World Banking with panelists from Bloomberg LP and Deutsche Bank AG discussed some of the issues raised by the launch of the Bloomberg Financial Services Gender-Equality Index.
Despite huge efforts dedicated to advancing women in leadership across all industries, gender parity still has a long way to go. What’s missing is culture.
Training financial inclusion-focused companies over the years has taught us that most technical challenges are actually management and leadership challenges.
The inaugural 2016 BFGEI recognizes 26 financial services firms with strong commitments to gender equality, including dedicated social disclosure policies and practices.
Women’s World Banking studied the staff composition and hiring practices of banks in Southeast Asia to find how to best promote diversity in the labor force.
How did Al Majmoua achieve impressive gender diversity numbers–more than half the staff are female and 60% of senior leaders are women–in a challenging environment?
Two financial institutions in the Middle East are succeeding in advancing gender diversity within their institutions, How they’re doing it.
We conducted a Management Development Program at Ujjivan (India) to support their leaders through the institution’s transformation into a small finance bank.
Our Women in Leadership program was only for women leaders in financial institutions. This visionary leader thought her low-income clients should get it too.
A collection of stories highlighting the women leaders who blazed the trail for women’s financial inclusion globally.
Our work consulting on Bloomberg’s Financial Services Gender-Equality Index was highlighted.
Our “visioning” exercise gives high-potential women leaders the time and opportunity to think, plan and grow into strong leaders in financial inclusion.
Our Leadership and Diversity for Innovation Program concluded with a series of events in India that corporate America can learn from to enhance their own corporate diversity.
The article, “What Happens When a Bank Bets on Women” from Chief Knowledge and Communications Officer Karen Miller appears in this publication.
A profile of Frances Sinha, co-founder of one of the largest social enterprises in India, Economic Development Associates, on her life’s work in financial inclusion.
Women’s World Banking Fellow Sandy Salama profiles head of our Tunisia network member, Enda inter-arabe, from her early history in journalism to a prominent financial inclusion advocate for women.
On insights from a perception expert, a high school principal and an underdog researcher on our work developing gender diverse leadership in financial institutions.
Leadership and Diversity Specialist Sarah Buitoni introduces our one-of-a-kind leadership program for senior leaders of financial institutions dedicated to serving the low-income market.
The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania joins Women’s World Banking to announce the Leadership and Diversity for Innovation Program, which will launch in April 2015.
Developing a meaningful insurance product for Finance Trust Bank’s low-income clients was not enough. We needed to develop an educational marketing campaign to help their clients understand (and make use of!) the TrustCare product.
A profile of the CEO of Kenya Women Holding and strong advocate for women’s financial inclusion.
Our Leadership Community members share best practices on what institutions and women themselves can do to promote greater gender equity.
“Promoting Women’s Leadership” is a collection of best practices that both companies and women leaders can implement to promote greater gender equity in their institution.
An interview with the Managing Director of ACCION’s Center for Financial Inclusion by guest blogger Surabhi Shahi.
After launching our leadership and diversity program offerings in 2009, Women’s World Banking set out to study how leadership trainings can best translate into bigger and more sustained changes at the institutional level. We asked ourselves: what aspects of our program design most effectively drove this kind of change?
Guest bloggers Prerna Padwal and Praneeta Kanchinadam tell the story of Roshaneh Zafar, founder and executive director of Pakistan network member Kashf Foundation.
These “Select Five” key indicators are the starting point—the minimum that all industry stakeholders should use to track and improve gender performance.
Fellow Ines shares the lessons she took home with her from a week with the Women in Leadership Program in Mexico, supported by MetLife.
Women’s World Banking has conducted more than a dozen Women in Leadership training programs around the world and each workshop manages to surprise and move us in different ways. This is the story of Mexico.
Besides the extent of their outreach and their ability to offer diverse products, an MFI’s success is now being measured by operational, financial, social, and gender indicators. In February 2014, Women’s World Banking’s Leadership and Gender Diversity program team provided Crecer, Crédito con Educación Rural in Bolivia just this opportunity to strengthen its team of managers through the Management Development Training program.
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
The Huffington Post”s ImpactX page featured a piece by Sarah Buitoni, a Specialist for our Leadership and Diversity programs, about the launch of Women”s World Banking”s Leadership Community.
Fellow Ramatolie reflects on her experiences participating in the Women in Leadership Program held in Mumbai last November.
It is a rare sight to see a group of women leaders come together to spend a week reflecting on their lives, professions and leadership impact. Yet this is exactly what a group of high-potential women leaders and managers did in Mumbai, India last November to build their skills, confidence
In honor of International Women’s Day on March 8, Women’s World Banking hosted an online roundtable with three alumni from our signature Women in Leadership program to reflect on their learnings from the program, how they have implemented these to become better leaders in their institution and ways this has inspired positive change among their colleagues and clients.
Women’s World Banking presents the five minimum indicators that financial institutions must track in order to measure and improve gender performance.
By Maura Hart, Manager, Public Relations Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation (NWTF) was founded in time of crisis in the Philippines 29 years ago. Decades later, NWTF has seen its clients through countless typhoons (an average of 22 per year in the Philippines) and other natural disasters, experiences that proved invaluable when Typhoon Haiyan (known in the Philippines as Yolanda) hit in November.
The Center for Microfinance Leadership is proud to announce the next webinar in our All Alumni Webinar Series: Leadership and Management Implications of Product Innovation taking place on Monday, September 30, 2013 at 9:00am EST
Women’s World Banking’s online Leadership Community for Center for Microfinance Leadership Alumni was featured in a report in the Fall 2013 Research Edition of the MIT Sloan Management Review Journal.
In celebration of our Community’s One Year Anniversary, we asked members to share photos of themselves working with their teams and to tell us their leadership philosophies. We are now pleased to share them with you through this video!
A new study from Thomson Reuters finds that companies with gender-diverse boards perform better than companies with zero women on their board. This echoes what the Center for Microfinance Leadership has known all along: that diverse perspectives lead to stronger decisions and healthier institutions…
The Optimizing Capital Structure Toolkit is essential for microfinance institutions (MFIs) undergoing transformation and beginning to mobilize deposits, MFIs have two new major sources of capital (equity and deposits), and it becomes a challenge to understand prudent or optimal mixes of savings, debt, quasi-equity, and equity.
Under Joyce Banda, Malawi’s economy is recovering, with manufacturing expected to grow six percent and agriculture 5.7 percent (World Bank) and respect for democracy and human rights has returned to the country (International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute).
In 2013, Women’s World Banking’s Center for Microfinance Leadership (CML) was given the incredible opportunity to create a new Senior Leadership Exchange to grow its own product offering while supporting the development of women leaders in microfinance.
A pesar de los avances obtenidos por las mujeres en términos de integración en los distintos sectores productivos de la sociedad, aún no han logrado igualdad en los puestos de dirección de las distintas empresas y entidades del país.
Women’s World Banking supporter Cordaid recently featured the Gender Performance Manual, the indicators uncovered from the work of our Gender Performance Initiative, on their website.
From the shock of the financial crisis to the reputational hangover of the challenge in Andra Pradesh to the aftermath of the Arab Spring, there has been little calm in the storm.
A good leader is humble, human, honest, funny and a hard worker. An enthusiastic delegation from Women’s World Banking attended the 17th Annual Wharton Leadership Conference on June 19, entitled “Rising Up to Leadership”. As is always true of this incredible annual event, the conference speakers offered their reflections on
Microfinance practitioners attend numerous training, workshops, exchanges, and conferences during the year. The skills and theories learned are invaluable for the participants of such events who normally leave these programs re-energized and full of ideas they want to implement in their organization and toward modifying their own management styles. However, at times it is difficult to get buy-in from others in the organization, and the concepts or organization development goals are often forgotten and never put into practice.
The Citi Foundation and Women’s World Banking team up to expand the Women in Leadership Program Women have played a critical role since the early days of microfinance, both in the founding of microfinance institutions (MFIs) and as a substantial portion of the client base. In recent years, as the
This toolkit will allow microfinance institutions to conduct a gender-focused self-assessment of their recruitment, retention and promotion of women staff.
Women’s World Banking’s Leadership Program held in October 2012 was featured in the Dutch banking publication Bank | Wereld.
Women’s World Banking’s Excellence in Leadership Award recognizes a financial institution within the Women’s World Banking’s network.
From April 16-20th, the WWB Center for Microfinance Leadership welcomed senior leaders in Philadelphia, USA for the 4th Annual Advanced Leadership Program. Participants hailed from 22 institutions in 19 different countries, representing all regions of the world.
View more photos of the Center for Microfinance Leadership in Morocco :
Microfinance as an industry is still quite young, and when it comes to addressing institutional support for gender diversity, the efforts are nascent. Much has been learned—both about what has worked and what has failed—in the corporate world about engaging women professionals. The question to the microfinance industry is how well can we take advantage of these inroads, these tested efforts and do even better at building inclusive institutions?
“Transforming the Landscape of Leadership in Microfinance: Maintaining the Focus on Women” introduces Women’s World Banking’s new methodology for helping MFIs support gender diversity at all levels of their institution.
