The Women’s Financial Inclusion Data (WFID) partnership – comprising the Global Banking Alliance for Women (GBA), Data2X, the Alliance for Financial Inclusion, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), IDB Invest, IFC, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group (WBG) – held an extremely productive, dynamic side event to the Spring Meetings of the IMF and WBG on April 20, featuring a keynote address by Her Majesty Queen Máxima of the Netherlands.
Titled “Turning Data into Action: Driving Financial Inclusion for Women,” the event featured evidence-based panel discussions between regulators, financial services providers and international organizations on how data has catalyzed more action to advance women’s financial inclusion.
Following highly engaging remarks by Her Majesty Queen Máxima, GBA Chief Executive Inez Murray, Dr. Tukiya Kankasa-Mabula of the Bank of Zambia, Julie T. Katzman of the IDB, Caren Grown of the WBG and Marco Espinosa-Vega of the IMF took the stage to discuss the importance of women’s financial inclusion champions and how we can best support them. Inez shared an overview of the WFID partnership’s Global Gender Data Strategy, which was launched at the event.
The Strategy, “The Way Forward: How Data Can Propel Full Financial Inclusion for Women,” defines the women’s financial inclusion ecosystem and influencers, the necessity for women’s financial inclusion champions, the pathway that leads ecosystem actors to become such champions, and the theory of change that could enable the world to achieve full financial inclusion for women. Download the document here.
The final session of the day explored how financial service providers and policymakers are working in their respective areas to close the financial inclusion gender gap, with panelists explaining their data-driven approaches to financially including women and sharing their results. Sharmila Hardi of IFC moderated the panel, which featured Daniel Gutiérrez of Banco BHD León, Heather Melville OBE of RBS, Peace Masozera Uwase of the National Bank of Rwanda and Maria Fernanda Trigo of CNBV in Mexico.
The event also featured the launch of the “Women’s Financial Inclusion Data Partnership Principles” – the set of beliefs and actions the WFID partnership has agreed to embrace to help increase women’s financial inclusion globally – and the premiere of a video from Data2X underscoring the necessity of sex-disaggregated data to closing the gender gap in financial inclusion. The Principles are available for download here, and the video is available to view below:
