Thrust on bridging gender gap in financial inclusion

Business Desk :
Speaking at the event, Dr Sayema Haque Bidisha, professor of Economics at Dhaka University, cited a 2018 survey by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and said 61 percent women in the country did not have access to financial services, 32 percent had access to formal financial services, and a paltry 7 percent had access to informal financial services.
Dr Bidisha who was the keynote presenter at the online seminar entitled “Financial inclusion of women: The discriminatory socio-cultural norms in Bangladesh”, however, said women’s participation in mobile financial services (MFS) is somewhat noteworthy, 57 percent thanks to various social security programmes of the government.
She attributed women’s lagging behind in financial inclusion to their lack of knowledge on information technology.
Due to poor understanding of IT, women have to go through various hardships in getting digital access, Dr Bidisha observed, adding, “That is why it is necessary to increase women’s knowledge on digital literature in the first place.”
Sarder Akhter Hamed, deputy managing director of Bank Asia Limited, told the event that the introduction of agent banking services has played a crucial role in increasing women’s, especially those in villages, access to financial services in recent years.
“Agent banking was launched in 2014 with a view to accelerating financial inclusion. Now 28 banks are providing services to people through 17,000 agent outlets across the country and 60-70% of the outlets are in rural areas.”