Lack of gender-intentional National Financial Inclusion Strategies (NFIS)
A National Financial Inclusion Strategy (NFIS) is a government-led framework used to coordinate financial inclusion policies and reforms. Without deliberate gender integration, these strategies risk overlooking women's specific barriers to access and use. When gender is not embedded from the outset, reforms designed to expand financial inclusion may disproportionately benefit men. Of 190 NFIS globally, only 44 explicitly support women's entrepreneurship, and of those, only 13 call for the collection of sex-disaggregated data. Without this data, regulators lack visibility into how markets work and how to ensure women are properly brought into the systems.
13 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
Research on NFIS highlights three design features that most strongly influence whether gender priorities translate into policy action: explicit gender targets, systematic collection of sex-disaggregated data (SDD), and institutional leadership within financial authorities. The evidence below summarizes how these elements shape the effectiveness of gender-intentional financial inclusion strategies.
Financial inclusion is not gender neutral; underserved populations, such as women and youth, will remain systematically excluded unless called out - and designed for - specifically. Across more than 60 national strategies globally, most mention women as an underserved group but do not include enforceable gender targets, dedicated budgets, or accountability mechanisms.
Strategies that require systematic collection of sex-disaggregated data allow regulators to identify gender gaps and track whether reforms benefit women. Of the 44 NFIS that mention women’s financial inclusion, only 13 mention collecting sex-disaggregated data. Without these data, regulators lack visibility into how markets actually work, and for whom.
Weak institutional leadership and unclear ownership within financial authorities limit the effective integration of gender into national financial inclusion strategies. Where responsibility for women’s financial inclusion is diffused, under-resourced, or treated as a cross-cutting issue without clear accountability, gender priorities are inconsistently applied across policy design, monitoring, and implementation. In the absence of sustained leadership, coordination mechanisms, and internal champions, women’s financial inclusion remains peripheral to core financial sector decision-making and is not systematically embedded within regulatory and policy frameworks.
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.
