International Women’s Day is an opportune moment to consider what citizens, businesses and governments can do to improve the livelihoods of women.
Celebrated on March 8 every year, the day provides a global platform to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women in the quest for a gender-equal world.
This year’s edition, under the banner #EmbraceEquity, for instance, seeks to rally the world to “forge women’s empowerment worldwide, build workspaces where women thrive, and empower women’s choices in health.”
As the 2030 deadline for the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal Five — achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls beckons, the message of International Women’s Day could not be more germane.
In Kenya, the imperative to encourage more women to participate fully in the economy is anchored in the Constitution.
It has found expression in several policies, notably the National Policy on Gender and National Development, which was approved in 2019.
The policy aims at achieving gender equity and greater participation by women and marginalised groups in the economy for the attainment of sustainable development.
Of all the tools for women’s empowerment, perhaps the most desirable and impactful is financial inclusion.
Financial inclusion seeks to provide consumers with unfettered access to all the prudentially sound and regulated financial services available in the market, shoulder to shoulder with their male counterparts, without any structural, socio-cultural, or economic roadblocks.
In the Kenyan context, for instance, a financially included woman should be able to access all the financial services available in the insurance, banking, savings and credit societies, pensions, capital and mobile money markets without any hindrance on account of her gender.
The biggest incentive for businesses to invest in financial inclusion for women is the fact that it makes commercial sense.
In Kenya, for instance, women constitute a sizeable 50.5 percent of the 47.5 million population (2019 census). This is a formidable market that cannot be ignored.
Secondly, women are increasingly becoming more influential at the household and business levels when decisions touching on financial products and services are being made.
Historically, there have been some socio-cultural impediments to women owning property, which elbowed a sizeable number of them from the collateral-based credit market, but laudably, this is changing across Africa.
In Kenya for instance, laws have been enacted to reverse this trend. As a result, matrimonial property is jointly owned, and can only be sold with the consent of both spouses.
Equally important, girls can inherit property from their parents.
Even then, there is still work to be done in the advancement of financial inclusion for women. According to the last FinAccess Survey Report, launched on December 15, 2021, a higher proportion of females continued to access financial products and services through informal providers, like chamas, compared to their male counterparts.
Going by data in the same report, which tracks financial inclusion, the gap between males and females improved from 5.2 percent in 2019 to 4.2 percent in 2021, denoting progress towards the achievement of parity between the two genders.
The biggest incentive for businesses to invest in financial inclusion for women is the fact that it makes commercial sense.
In Kenya, for instance, women constitute a sizeable 50.5 percent of the 47.5 million population (2019 census). This is a formidable market that cannot be ignored.
Secondly, women are increasingly becoming more influential at the household and business levels when decisions touching on financial products and services are being made.
In Kenya, an increasingly large number of households, 32 percent according to FIDA (Federation of Women Lawyers), are female-led.
Several global studies show that women also tend to be more financially disciplined than men, with the end result that they make good consumers of financial products and services.
In relative terms, women are thus likely to repay loans in time. Ditto insurance premiums and the periodic payments that are a critical component of pension and investment plans.
According to a United Nations study, women also spend more, up to 90 percent of their incomes on family, compared to 35 percent by men, underlining greater social impact.
In Kenya, out of the realization that women are a distinct consumer class with unique needs and preferences, compared to men, a number of businesses in the financial services sector have come up with “women propositions” and brands.
These are, largely, bundled solutions targeted at women. In some instances, a regular product has been tweaked to answer more to the needs of women.
At Heritage Insurance Kenya for instance, we have fashioned out a premium motor insurance product that caters to the unique needs of female drivers.
Another way of increasing financial inclusion among women is to make the points of interaction between the consumer and the business, like branches, call centres and digital options like mobile applications and USSD more women-friendly.
PAYE Tax Calculator
Note: The results are not exact but very close to the actual.
