Making Digital Finance Work for Women in the MENA Region: 8 Lessons from the Field
- Partner: Arab Women’s Enterprise Fund (AWEF), DAI, UK Department for International Development (DFID)
- Publication Type: Report
- Date: April 2020
- Team: Chloé Gueguen, Reham Gharbiyeh, Julia Hakspiel, Sabal Majali
- Recommended Citation:
Despite progress over the past few years, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region still has the largest gender gap in terms of women’s economic participation in the world. This economic divide also holds true for financial inclusion – only 35% of women have a financial account compared to 52% for men (Global Findex). While the challenges are significant, so are the opportunities. Innovative Digital Financial Services (DFS) have strong potential to accelerate women’s financial empowerment.
This Practitioner Learning Brief builds on MarketShare Associates’ work supporting the Arab Women’s Enterprise Fund (AWEF) to stimulate increased women’s economic empowerment through a market systems approach. The Brief explores opportunities and challenges of Digital Financial Services (DFS) and highlights eight lessons from 14 case studies on how to design and implement interventions that can pave the way for women’s digital financial empowerment across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and more widely. This Brief aims to encourage others to test and scale innovative approaches to making digital finance work better for women’s empowerment.
