Making the financial sector truly work for both women and men will require a systemic shift. This starts with better understanding the underlying norms driving the behavior of all actors, and then designing interventions that can make change happen. Invisible gender-norm-based barriers prevent the financial system from meeting women’s needs at scale. Recent market system gender norms diagnostics carried out by CGAP and the FSD Network in Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda illustrate how assumptions and biases shape the behavior of everyone in the financial market system.
“Every person has a freedom to finance, personal finance. Not everything that happens to me, my spouse should know about.” Credit Officer Uganda
Gender norms play out differently in different contexts
Figure 1 below compares gender norms across Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda, revealing how the same norm can have differing strength and prevalence in different countries. For example, the norm that women should seek approval from men for financial decisions is prevalent in all three countries, but ranges from highly prevalent and strong in Uganda, to moderately prevalent and strong in Tanzania, to moderately low in Rwanda. Evidence shows it is not enough to simply know that a specific gender norm is relevant to women’s financial inclusion (WFI). Rather, country-level analysis is needed to understand the nuance of how strong and prevalent the norm is for different market actors (including financial service providers (FSPs), supporting function providers, and rulemakers), how the norm impacts certain behavior that results in women being excluded or underserved, and whether and how these behaviors can change. Understanding this provides insight into how development actors can best influence that change. For example, an approach that works in the Rwandan context of a weakening norm with no real sanctions for transgression will not succeed in the Tanzanian or Ugandan context, where the norm is more strictly upheld. While norms may repeat across countries, their strength and prevalence, and interrelatedness are country, context, and market actor specific, and understanding this context is key for developing successful interventions.
Figure 1: Comparison of norm strength and prevalence across Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. Source: Authors’ aggregation of findings from gender norms diagnostics in Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda.
Behavior affected by norms shows entry points for interventions
The gender norms market system diagnostics carried out in Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda generally showed an easing of prevalence and/or strength for most of the tested norms, which is promising. The strongest and most prevalent norm in Rwanda and Uganda was that women should not have financial privacy from men. This seems at odds with gender norms that are relaxing, such as women should seek men’s approval for financial decisions (low in Rwanda and moderate in Uganda) or women should not own land or large assets (moderate-to-low strength and prevalence in Rwanda and Uganda). While the privacy norm is deeply entrenched, and the best strategy may be to circumvent in the short run, the fact that other norms are relaxing opens opportunities to work with specific actors like FSPs or the regulator to reinforce norm transformation.
Figure 2: Framework that classifies norms based on strength and prevalence requiring different intervention strategies
Developing effective interventions
Let’s look at two examples that demonstrate how identifying the prevalence and strength of norms by different actors can inform where interventions can be most effectively targeted and with which partners. The first example is the opportunity identified by Access to Finance Rwanda (AFR) to leverage norm change to increase the provision and uptake of productive credit by women entrepreneurs. Rwandan women business owners struggle to access and use productive credit to grow their businesses. Drawing on the practical norms classification framework developed by CGAP (Figure 2), the diagnostic showed that overall, the Rwandan context is one of relaxing norms with fewer sanctions for transgression and greater acceptance by women and other market actors for women to access and use financial services. However, the diagnostic also found that FSP behavior lags behind these shifts in multiple ways:
- They assume women prefer family funding despite evidence that women actively seek formal services;
- They maintain spousal consent requirements despite relaxing community norms around women’s financial autonomy; and
- They continue risk assessment practices that reflect outdated assumptions about women’s financial capabilities.
The increased flexibility in relevant norms suggests that FSPs that develop services based on evidence will benefit from the increased capacity of women to exercise financial autonomy. AFR used the insights from the gender norms diagnostic to identify opportunities to work with three Rwandan FSPs to support women-centered design of products for women-owned MSMEs.
“[The husband’s signature is needed]… because we believe no woman can stand without her husband behind her.” MFI officer, Tanzania
In Tanzania, one of the key constraints to women’s access to productive credit is the lack of suitable bankable collateral. The Tanzanian gender norms diagnostic showed the norm “women should not own land or large assets” relaxing across all market actors, with women, FSPs, supporting function providers, and rule makers all considering this norm to be low-moderate in prevalence and strength. This creates an opportunity to leverage women’s asset ownership for greater financial inclusion. Tanzania’s forthcoming Secured Transactions Act will enable the implementation of a movable collateral registry, so that women, who tend to own such collateral, can formally register and pledge their assets. This registry will be a key risk management tool for FSPs and builds off existing supply-side willingness to use women’s assets, with some banks and MFIs already allowing the usage of movable collateral such as warehouse receipts or business equipment. The willingness of market actors to accept women’s asset ownership is a critical success factor of this registry. FSD Tanzania used the diagnostic and their experience with other aspects of women’s productive credit to prioritise supporting the Bank of Tanzania to operationalize the registry, and in a way that is inclusive of women.
The examples from Rwanda and Tanzania demonstrate that diagnostic findings offer essential context and nuanced insights for action. Simply stating that collateral is a challenge because “women shouldn’t own land” is too simplistic to drive meaningful change. Instead, understanding which market actors view this norm as low or moderately relevant enables targeted, effective interventions. Guidance developed by CGAP and the FSD network can help funders and market facilitators in this effort. Concrete examples of how to shift the behavior of financial service providers, regulators, credit bureaus, and other system actors can inspire broader change—provided there is a clear grasp of how the prevalence and strength of gender norms shape the actions of different stakeholders in each specific context.
To learn more about CGAP resources on gender norms, visit our Collection: Addressing Gender Norms for Lasting Transformation
