Gender and Financial Inclusion through the Post

Women form a disproportionately large share of the world’s unbanked population. Gender inequalities in employment and earnings mean that women have lower incomes, making them less able to open accounts in formal financial institutions. Moreover, women frequently do not have the collateral necessary to seek out loans from the formal financial sector. This paper investigates the extent to which financial services offered through posts may serve women in the developing world better than FIs. We find evidence that posts do seem to include women to a greater extent than FIs. The empirical analysis suggests that this is partly a function of widely distributed postal networks and the lower transactions costs in combination with cheaper services offered by the posts. We also find some evidence that this outcome may be a result of greater discrimination against women by FIs rather than systematic outreach to women by the posts.