In her words

Mary Ellen Iskenderian: Why the financial inclusion of women matters

One billion women around the world are estimated to be out of the purview of the financial sector. Closing the gender gap “would be the right thing to do as a matter of equity alone,” writes Mary Ellen Iskenderian, the president and CEO of Women’s World Banking (WWB), a global non-profit that seeks to provide low-income women access to financial tools and resources.

Ensuring women’s independent access to finance has another more profound impact on human development. “There is ample evidence that she will spend that money in ways that contribute directly to the well-being of her family…when money in the household is controlled by women, more of the family members are healthier and eat more nutritious diets and children are better educated,” writes Iskenderian, a passionate advocate for financial inclusion.

At a time when political parties have been competing with each other in putting money directly in the hands of powerful woman voter—seen most recently in Maharashtra where the Mahayuti’s electoral victory is seen as a result—Iskenderain spoke about expanding the net and the net to bring more women into the formal financial sector.

At the first UN conference for human rights for women in Mexico City in 1975, Elaben Bhatt of SEWA, Kenyan entrepreneur and banker Mary Okelo, and Esther Ocloo, an activist-feminist from Ghana came together with the idea of creating chapters all over the world to provide guarantees for bank loans to women entrepreneurs.

There was a growing microfinance movement and many microfinance institutions had been started by women. So WWB said: “Why don’t we work to build their capacity?” For a number of years we did both. But creating a network of microfinance institutions dedicated to financial services for women overtook the other mission.

You’ve spoken a lot about financial inclusion.........

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