Financial literacy projects for women

Posted on December 19, 2017 by Aatreyi Mitra

Research shows that more than 41 percent of the female population struggle financially. What are organization doing to change this? Financial literacy is the knowledge of how to open an account, how to save better and be more financially independent in general. Are organizations promoting financial literacy for women? We gathered information pertaining to programs all over the world aimed at improving financial literacy for women.

Worldwide projects

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has published its findings about Women and Financial Education post the G20 summit in 2012. They have also made several literature reviews and analyzed barriers to women’s financial empowerment through lack of financial literacy.

Women’s Institute for Financial Education (WIFE) organization has a Money Club program where women meet regularly to discuss saving, budgeting, expenses, retirement planning and anything financial. Currently there are about 442 Money Clubs with 2,852 members in 46 states of USA and 7 other countries. In addition, WIFE also organizes Second Saturday workshops to impart financial information for newly divorced women.

National projects

America

The Financial Literacy Organization for Women and Girls (FLOW) aims to empower women and girls with financial knowledge and skills. FLOW organizes several year-round conferences, seminars, workshops and boot camps and has ties to many institutions like Federal Reserve Bank, Morgan Stanley and Credit Union. Their events help women make responsible decisions about spending, saving, borrowing, and investing for a promising future of economic well-being.

The Financial Women’s Association (FWA) organizes educational workshops for women and also has mentoring and scholarship programs for women since 2001. Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement (WISER) too has workshops, training and provides materials to educate women of all ages about financial aspects. The Lisa Initiative and the Womanspace has similar programs for financial literacy for women.

Asia and other countries

In Hong Kong, The Women’s Foundation has several financial literacy programs for marginalized women. Launched in 2011. It uses innovative methods of training to communities and through its partnerships, their initiative has seen highly positive results and won many accolades.  In Philippines, the Philippine Commission on Women has published its own Gender and Financial Literacy Training Manual to better train women from all backgrounds about microfinance, financial and risk management.

The Financial Literacy Foundation by the Australian Government has done extensive research on women’s current understanding of money matters. Daughters of Tomorrow (DOT) by Financial Women’s Association, Singapore has specially tailored coursework with case studies for improving financial literacy for women.

Hope this help! Please do not hesitate to contact us for more information or leave comments.

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Microfinance & Entrepreneurship Projects for Women

Posted on December 5, 2017 by Aatreyi Mitra

Are organizations helping women from challenging backgrounds to grow financially? We gathered information pertaining to programs all over the world aimed at improving financial access for women. Microfinance is one such banking tool used to issue loans for low-income individuals. It was first started in 1983 by the Yunus Foundation in Bangladesh that organized Grameen Banks to provide Microfinance. This financial model was greatly successful. The funds from microfinance are generally aimed at financing start-up opportunities, education, insurance and investments.  We have collected information on such programs that provide access to finance for women.

World Wide Projects

The Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi) is a Financial Intermediary Fund (FIF) of the World Bank. Launched in October 2017 at the G20 Summit, the program has already raised $340 million. It aims to fill the existing $300 billion annual credit gap for women.

Similarly, International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank group has gender programs, some specifically to promote entrepreneurship for women and improving their access to credit. IFC’s Banking on Women Program raised $1.35 billion in 34 countries in 2010. In 2014, IFC joined with Goldman Sachs “10,000 Women” program to launch Women Entrepreneurs Opportunity Facility. This program raised $600 million and expects to fund 100,000 women-owned SMEs through its financial partners. 

Women’s World Banking (WWB) is another such organization that works towards financial development for women. It works with 49 financial institutions in 32 countries for the financial inclusion of 1.1 billion women. WWB conducts extensive research, develops Gender Performance Indicator and designed loans, savings accounts and micro-insurance as per its Annual Report 2016

Gender, Equality, Diversity Branch of International Labor Office (ILO GED) has various international projects for gender equality, including for microfinance. The Social Finance Programme (SFP) in cooperation with the Gates Foundation is ILO’s major microfinance project. The WEDGE team, part of ILO’s Small Enterprise (SEED) programme, also works to enhance economic opportunities for women by developing tools and strategies specifically for entrepreneurship.

National Projects

Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) started a Dabi loan project for women in villages of Bangladesh. Today it has 3.4 billion borrowers connected by 300000 village organizations and also has independent operations in countries such as Myanmar, Pakistan, Uganda, Tanzania, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Similarly, microfinancing greatly helped growth in Tunisia. This IFC project in collaboration with Tunisian microfinance institution Enda Inter-Arabe in 2012 was greatly successful.

Pro Mujer targets improving financial stability across Latin America since 1990. In its Report of 2015, Pro Mujer provided loans worth $660 million serving 250000 female entrepreneurs.

Hope these help! Please do not hesitate to contact us for more information or leave comments.

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Data Links for Programs Promoting Women in Finance

Posted on December 2, 2017 by Aatreyi Mitra

Are organizations working to increase financial inclusion for women? Are corporates promoting programs for women in finance? We gathered sources of data pertaining to policies and programs aimed at women in the finance sector. Below are some links that can be used to collect information and key figures about women in finance programs.

Microfinance and Entrepreneurship Projects for Women

World Bank

 International Finance Corporation-World Bank (IFC)

Increasing Financial Literacy in Women

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

Strategies to Improve Gender Equality

Hope they help! Please do not hesitate to contact us for more information or leave comments.

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How risk-averse are women in finance?

Posted on November 22, 2017 by Aatreyi Mitra

How risk-averse are women in finance?

Gender & Finance Literature Review Series #2: Dohmen, Huffman, Falk, Sunde, Schupp and Wagner (2011)

In this G&F LRS #2, we analyze the following research paper:

Dohmen T, Huffman D, Falk A, Sunde U, Schupp J and Wagner GG. 2011. Individual risk attitudes: measurement, determinants and behavioral consequences. Journal of the European Economic Association, 9(3) 522-550.

This paper explores how risk-taking attitudes vary and factors that affect this attitude. They show the correlation of ‘the willingness to take risk’ in people with the decisions made in various sectors of their lives. Dohmen and others (2011) use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) surveying 22,000 individuals and compare it with the results from a lottery experiment conducted on 450 individuals.

Estimating risk attitudes

The authors ask individuals how willing they are to take risk in general on a scale from 0 to 10 and further question their willingness to take risk in the context of driving, finance, sports, health and career. Through regression analysis they see that demographics and physique of the person have an impact on the will to take risk. Dohmen and others (2011) find that women are more risk averse than men, that older members of the group are more risk averse than the younger and that having an income and wealth are positively related to risk-taking. In addition, they also find that the will to take risk is directly related to the person’s height and his or her parent’s educational background. These results are further confirmed by the regression studies on the reactions to a lottery game carried out on a smaller population.

Through another regression study on the SOEP survey, Dohmen and others (2011) compare risk attitudes in different contexts and find that people are most willing to take risk with their careers and least willing to take risk with their health and financial matters. These preferences are brought forth by the actions of these individuals in real-life scenarios. For example, a person who is self-employed, naturally has a high preference to take risk in the career forefront.

Implications for gender and risk attitudes

It is important for us to note that Dohmen and others (2011) conclude that women have a lower willingness to take risk than men. They also concretely find that people have the lowest preference to take risk in financial matters and highest for their careers. From this it can be implied that that women in finance may have chosen the field of finance with greater confidence as they are least likely to take risk in both career and finance. In addition, they are also extremely likely to calculate their decisions in the field more carefully in order to avoid high-risk situations.

Use in the Gender & Finance project

One of the aspects of the Gender & Finance project is research. This research uses experiments to better understand the behavior of individuals in terms of financial decisions. It is based on the simulation tool SimTrade, which allows one to study the reaction of participants to gender-related events. At the end of simulation, a survey is proposed to participants. One of the questions is about their risk attitude towards risk. This question uses the general question formulated by Dohmen and others (2011): How willing are you to take risk in general?

You can download our PowerPoint presentation below.

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Does the gender of top executives matter?

Posted on October 22, 2017 by Aatreyi Mitra

In this G&F LRS #1, we analyze the following research paper:

Lee PM, James EH. 2007. She-E-Os: Gender effects and investor reactions to the announcements of top executive appointments. Strategic Management Journal 28(3): 227-241.

This research paper shows that when representatives from a social category start taking on new roles, due to the lack of reference, these members start being perceived differently. Women in corporates are examples of this phenomenon as they only comprise 4% of top officers and thus gain a special status. These biases and stereotypes for women have a direct implication on the firm. The authors study stock market price fluctuations for firms in 1990-2000, also following the corresponding major executive announcements, CEO appointments, newspaper articles and press releases.

Hypotheses and Simulations

The authors formulated six hypotheses and ran various simulations to support them. Stock market reaction is found to be more negative on the announcement of a female CEO than on the announcement of a male CEO for companies.

Having followed various sources of public information, Lee and James (2007) also concludes that there exists a bias in the media with greater number of articles written about female CEOs than for male CEOs over their initial years in office. Moreover, simulation on the language used in these articles also indicates that media tends to emphasize on gender, gender-related topics and organizational considerations for female CEOs while being gender neutral and more organization oriented for male CEOs. A simple example would be how the word “family” shows in articles for women more often than for men. While stock market fluctuations are not as dramatic when women are promoted to higher managerial roles, it tends to be more negative when there is an announcement about the appointment of a female to the CEO position. Further analysis also brings forth that the stock market cares about the women CEO being an insider in the firm and prefers it to a women CEO being a fresh outsider.

Conclusions and Implications

As a result, the authors conclude that corporates should be more aware of the potential risks with female executive appointment and formulate a strategy to communicate this news better. More importantly, stereotypes must change and will, once more women are appointed and it isn’t a rare phenomenon anymore. It is also vital that media is more careful and unbiased in their language as they are responsible in shaping opinions and stock market reactions to a great extent. It is also interesting to explore that diversity can be broadened beyond gender and include racial and ethnic in the corporate world and may have similar stock market implications.

You can download our PowerPoint presentation below.

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