General

Cultivating Financially Fearless Women: Lessons from Our Pilot in India with LXME

By Pallavi Madhok, VP, Advisory Services, South Asia, Women’s World Banking and Priti Rathi Gupta, Founder, LXME Digital financial services (DFS) have unlocked exciting pathways to inclusion for historically excluded populations, especially women. However, despite mobile internet access and digital platforms expanding rapidly, true engagement with DFS among women, particularly

October 28, 2025

Products & Solutions

eRupee Could Enhance Digital Payment Adoption in India, Deepening Women’s Financial Inclusion

Pallavi Madhok, VP, Advisory Services – South Asia, Women’s World Banking, and Gabriel Bizama, Researcher, University of Bern India’s digital payments landscape has revolutionized how the country transacts. Its Unified Payments Interface (UPI), launched in 2016 by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), under the aegis of the Reserve

October 22, 2025

Products & Solutions

Prepaid Wallets Unlock Digital Finance for Cautious Women Savers

By Pallavi Madhok, VP, Advisory Services, South Asia, Women’s World Banking and Dilip Modi, Chairman, Spice Connect Women’s digital financial journeys are starkly different than those of men; their learning curve is steeper, and confidence-building takes time and consistency. In our “UPI for Her” project with the National Payments Corporation

October 16, 2025

Woman in India wearing mask to protect against COVID-19.

General

The Pandemic Impact on Women in India: Insights on Financial Resilience & Fallback Position

The COVID-19 pandemic affected women in India in many ways. A Women’s World Banking survey conducted in the Fall of 2021 in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal gives light to the ways in which women in these states were impacted by the pandemic. Women in these two states responded to

July 26, 2023

Research & Perspectives

Report: Revolutionizing Product Design in Financial Services

Product Design in Women’s Financial Services As Women’s World Banking President and CEO Mary Ellen Iskenderian aptly notes, The global average hides the starker reality of the situation women face. In some countries, it will take over 100 years to achieve gender equality in financial access without further intervention. The

June 21, 2023

Research & Perspectives

Policy Brief: Why Advocate for More Women Banking Agents?

Research from Women’s World Banking and our partners highlights the significant benefits of more women banking agents, both for the Financial Services Providers (FSPs) that employ them and for the women agents themselves. But in order to reap these benefits, FSPs need guidance and support from policymakers when it comes

May 2, 2023

Event

Unlocking Credit for Women-Led Micro Businesses

By Pallavi Madhok, Director, Advisory Services – South Asia, Women’s World Banking Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) are the country’s economic growth engines. Many MSMEs have struggled to sustain themselves in the aftermath of the pandemic and require financial support to overcome the economic downturn. Women-led small businesses –

February 14, 2023

Research & Perspectives

Report: Making Jan Dhan Work for Rural Women

India has made a huge amount of progress in the last-mile delivery of banking services to underserved communities. The opening of Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) accounts has provided millions of Indians with access to at least a basic account. Since its launch in 2014, the number of PMJDY

November 15, 2022

Products & Solutions

#ItsHerEconomyToo Interview Series: How One Indian Fintech Company is Advancing Women’s Digital Equity

In this series we dive into the work happening around the world with Women’s Digital Financial Inclusion Advocacy Hub partners, and explore how they are driving women’s digital financial inclusion. As evidenced by this year’s Global Findex Report, digital financial inclusion isn’t just an urgent moral imperative, but an economic one

September 9, 2022

Products & Solutions

In a world of gender bias, Lendingkart’s AI-based credit model stands apart

By Sonja Kelly, Director of Research and Advocacy, Women’s World Banking While undoubted progress has been made in some areas of gender equality, examples of everyday gender bias are still so prevalent that they almost go unnoticed. In the corporate world, unequal pay, boardroom bias, even next technologies like AI

March 11, 2022

Research & Perspectives

Report: Market Opportunities for Women’s Savings: Evidence from India

Women’s World Banking’s work with women customers as well as relevant literature in the field, shows that women who save are better positioned to support their families, weather emergencies, take advantage of economic opportunities, and build their businesses. In this study, we collected and analyzed data to better understand why

November 11, 2021

Products & Solutions

Report: The Power of Jan Dhan: Making Finance Work for Women in India

Women’s World Banking’s first industry report in India highlights the design of its unique ‘Jan Dhan Plus’ solution, and learnings from a subsequent pilot study that helped nurture regular savings behavior among low-income women in the country. To understand women’s savings behaviors, Women’s World Banking worked with Bank of Baroda,

August 18, 2021

Research & Perspectives

Report: Determinants of Women’s Financial Inclusion and Economic Empowerment

Women’s financial inclusion and economic empowerment are critical building blocks in development. Between now and 2030, the target date for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the inclusion of women in the financial sector and their economic engagement and empowerment will unlock major milestones on the road to a more

June 30, 2021

Research & Perspectives

Report: Empowering Women on a Journey Towards Digital Financial Capability

Financial inclusion is becoming more and more digital. To accelerate this journey to digitization, and not let women customers be left even further behind, we need to ensure policymakers and financial service providers focus on effectively supporting women customers build their digital financial capabilities, so they can use digital financial services with ease and confidence. This report

March 4, 2021

Research & Perspectives

Building Resilience and Savings for Women Customers Post COVID-19

2021 will be a crucial year for women to build their financial resilience and begin recovering from the setbacks created by COVID-19. According to a recent McKinsey report, women globally are twice as likely to experience job loss due to the pandemic, despite making up only 39% of total employment.

February 4, 2021

Research & Perspectives

Data Deep Dive: Her Resilience in the Face of COVID-19

Women’s World Banking’s global network of financial service providers (FSPs) champions women’s financial inclusion in their local markets, shares best practices, and leverages expertise in inclusive economies. Never has this community of practice been more important to women’s economic empowerment than now, particularly with the COVID-19 pandemic creating adverse economic

February 4, 2021

Research & Perspectives

Inclusive digital payments solutions for the garment sector workers in Bangladesh

This post is provided by the Better than Cash Alliance, United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), in support of the Making Finance Work for Women Summit’s Ask the Experts session “Driving the Potential of Digitized Wages” in which Marjo Chaintreau, Private Sector Digital Innovation Lead, Better Than Cash Alliance UNCDF, served as

October 21, 2020

Research & Perspectives

How Financial Service Providers Play a Role in Healthcare’s Response to Covid-19

By Giudy Rusconi, Specialist, Quantitative Research and Sonja Kelly, Director of Research and Advocacy, Women’s World Banking Financial institutions provide a literal lifeline for many of their hundreds of millions of clients around the world, and never more so than now. As Covid-19 spreads to more low- and middle-income countries,

May 28, 2020

Research & Perspectives

Micro-businesses 2.0: A new generation of women “social commerce” entrepreneurs in India & Indonesia

This blog summarizes findings from a new Women’s World Banking research report available here. In India and Indonesia, women have long battled a litany of challenges to start and expand their own businesses. Constraints related to low access to capital, restricted mobility, limitations on property rights, time poverty, and gender

November 30, 2019

Research & Perspectives

Report: Social commerce entrepreneurship and new opportunities for women’s financial inclusion in India and Indonesia

With support from Standard Chartered and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Women’s World Banking conducted research in India and Indonesia to investigate the potential of social commerce to advance women entrepreneurs’ financial inclusion.

November 8, 2019

Products & Solutions

Building Digital Capacity for Women in Bangladesh

Project overview: Women’s World Banking partnered with Dutch Bangla Bank Limited (DBBL) in Bangladesh with generous support from the MetLife foundation to understand why women are not engaging with digital financial services. Specifically, we looked at DBBL’s Rocket mobile wallet account usage. This work with DBBL will not only help

October 28, 2019

Research & Perspectives

Peer-to-Peer Learning Between Countries Can Foster Financial Inclusion

In April, Women’s World Banking convened policymakers from around the world—including Indonesia—at Oxford University’s Saïd School of Business for a leadership program for regulators focused on the development and promotion of policy initiatives for women and supporting banks in creating a pipeline of women leaders internally. This is not the first time that Women’s World Banking has partnered with regulators in Indonesia to encourage financial inclusion.

May 23, 2019

Research & Perspectives

Financial Inclusion in India

The gender agnostic approach has gone on for too long, and that needs to change.

April 12, 2019

Products & Solutions

Making Mobile Money Work for Women

With a growing gender gap in financial inclusion in Bangladesh, it is imperative to understand the behavioral barriers women face when engaging with digital financial services.

February 5, 2019

Research & Perspectives

Indian Women Aren’t Using Their Bank Accounts. This Is How and Why Women’s World Banking Plans to Change That.

India has experienced exponential growth and enacted innovative financial initiatives in recent years, but promising indicators of greater financial inclusion mask a concerning trend. About half of the women in India with personal bank accounts use them in a limited capacity or not at all. Women’s World Banking’s India Strategy

January 22, 2019

Research & Perspectives

Giving Non-Bank Savers a Reason to Save at a Bank

Women’s World Banking undertook research to determine why women aren’t saving actively in a bank and tested prototypes to change that behavior.

November 12, 2018

Products & Solutions

Why Women in Bangladesh Are Staying Away From Financial Services, and How to Win Them Over

Women’s World Banking’s strategy for Bangladesh addresses why women are getting left out of the country’s financial inclusion gains, and sets out ambitious, workable solutions to shrink the gender gap.

October 29, 2018

Products & Solutions

Uncovering Women’s Attitudes Towards Health in India

Health insurance is complicated. It is full of financial jargon, and it can be confusing to understand even for those who can afford it and are paying premiums for it.

October 16, 2018

Products & Solutions

Delivering on the Digital Promise for Women in Bangladesh

What needs to happen in Bangladesh before digital financial services become the financial inclusion solution for women in the country?

February 13, 2018

Research & Perspectives

I believe in women as entrepreneurs, leaders and changemakers: Q&A with Humaira Islam

Shahida Pervin, Deputy Director of Shakti Foundation for Disadvantaged Women in Bangladesh interviews the founder of the organization, Humaira Islam.

July 13, 2015

Women in Leadership

A short biography of Ms. Nurjahan Begum

Ujjivan’s Chandralekha Chaudhari profiles the accomplishments of one of the women who helped Muhammad Yunus found Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.

October 27, 2014

Research & Perspectives

Microfinance and domestic violence—causality is not as straightforward as you think

Saif Mohammad Moinul Islam, private sector engagement coordinator at Care Bangladesh, wrote a letter to to The Guardian Global Development Professionals Network last week with the provocative headline: "Domestic violence in Bangladesh: blame it on microfinance."

September 17, 2013

WWB News

CGAP Focus Note highlights leader of Bangladesh network member ASA

In July, CGAP highlighted the exceptional leadership of Shafiqual Choudhury of ASA, our network member in Bangladesh. He played a leading role in averting a microfinance crisis threatening the country, similar to ones that affected Nicaragua, Morocco and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

July 1, 2013