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Broader legal constraints
Structural constraints embedded in laws, policies, and macroeconomic systems shape women's ability to participate in the economy - including whether they can work, own assets, and access services. Even where women have access to appropriate financial products, skills, and supportive norms, these systems ultimately determine whether they can work, earn income, own assets, and participate in markets. Without addressing these obstacles, gains in access or usage are likely to be partial, uneven, or unsustained.
9 Connected Barriers
Most Relevant Segments
- 01. Excluded, marginalized
- 02. Excluded, high potential
- 03. Included, underserved
- 04. Included, not underserved
Most Relevant Customer Journey Phases
- Phase 1: Account Ownership
- Phase 2: Basic Account Usage
- Phase 3: Active Account Usage
- Phase 4: Economic Empowerment
Key Evidence
Evidence shows that the enabling environment for women’s financial inclusion - encompassing legal frameworks, policy and institutional systems, and macroeconomic and fiscal structures - can act as either a constraint or a catalyst for women’s economic participation. These systems determine whether women can work, own assets, access markets, and benefit from financial services, while gaps in design, implementation, and enforcement often limit their effectiveness in practice. As a result, structural barriers within the enabling environment set the outer boundary of what financial inclusion efforts can achieve.
Across contexts, legal frameworks set the foundation for women’s economic participation by determining their rights to work, own assets, and transact - making them a primary structural driver of financial inclusion outcomes.
- Discriminatory laws governing property, inheritance, and marital rights limit women’s ownership and control of assets. These legal constraints reduce women’s ability to use assets as collateral, restricting access to credit and limiting participation in formal financial systems. (UN Women, n.d.)
- Evidence from Tanzania shows that even where legal protections for women’s land rights exist, customary practices and weak implementation continue to limit women’s ability to own and control assets, constraining their economic participation and access to financial services. (UN Women 2021)
Tax and fiscal systems are not gender-neutral: policy design, administration, and public spending decisions shape incentives for women’s labor force participation, business activity, and economic inclusion, with direct implications for financial inclusion outcomes.
- Tax systems - particularly joint taxation - raises marginal tax rates for second earners, most often women, reducing labor force participation incentives and contributing to persistent gender gaps in employment, income, and long-term financial inclusion. (International Centre for Tax and Development, The Brookings Institute 2024)
- Tax provisions and exemptions can implicitly favor male-dominated sectors and forms of employment, reinforcing gender disparities in labor markets. These biases shape women’s access to income, formal employment, and financial services over time. (World Bank 2025)
- Gender budgeting analysis demonstrates that fiscal policy is not neutral: revenue and expenditure decisions affect women and men differently. Without deliberate design, public spending and taxation systems can reinforce structural inequalities, limiting women’s access to economic opportunities and services. (World Bank 2025)
Interventions that have successfully addressed this barrier
The following Exemplar represents one evidence-based interventions that has shown success in addressing this particular barrier. There may be other Exemplars for this barrier in the larger Barriers & Exemplars Analysis compendium deck.
