Women account for 60% of the world’s working poor but own less than 10% of the world’s property. Discriminatory practices at workplaces, in regulation and in the home stifle women’s entrepreneurial drive. Investing in women can be transformational.
DFID will ensure that our work with the private sector benefits women and girls wherever possible; whether on skills development, providing access to financial services, ensuring rights to land and assets or addressing discrimination in the workplace. We are supporting land reform and changes in inheritance laws to secure women’s rights to own and use property.
- In Nepal, we support market-orientated skills training and link women and men to jobs through the Nepal Employment Fund,
- in Zambia, new financial products that target female clients are being developed for small and medium enterprises and,
- in Zimbabwe the Wholesale Microfinance Facility goes beyond simply providing small loans.
Finance linked to assistance aims to make women economically independent and less susceptible to gender inequalities and reduce HIV/AIDS infection from gender-based violence.
Control over economic assets
Work to ensure that women gain direct access to, and control over, economic assets could include: support for increased access to financial services and financial literacy training; increased incomes through more jobs and better working conditions for women; and programmes supporting land reform and inheritance rights to secure women’s rights to own and use property.
We will ensure our cash transfer programmes reach women. We will support initiatives to give women and girls the skills, confidence and networks that will help them to keep hold of their economic assets and make productive use of them.
We plan to work with the private sector to develop innovative approaches to promote assets for girls. We are planning initiatives to improve access to financial services for over 18 million women, to help 2.3 million women access jobs, and to secure access to land for 4.5 million women (including in Rwanda and India).
Our focus on women and girls
The UK has put girls and women at the heart of our international development approach. First and foremost, women's right to access and benefit from economic opportunities is a basic human right. And without empowering women economically and more broadly, we cannot hope to achieve our wider development goals, or those for peace, security or economic growth.
Progress has been hard won. We must ensure that we continue to move forward to make sure rights for every girl and woman are realised. We know that poor women face disproportionate barriers in accessing finance. In Kenya more than 85% of loans require collateral (usually land with a registered title), but women hold only 1% of registered land titles, and in Uganda women own 40% of private enterprises but receive only 9% of credit (World Bank, 2010).
The UK has highlighted the critical role of improving access to finance, in enabling women (and others) to reach their full potential. Our Strategic Vision for Girls and Women set an ambitious target to help 18 million women to access financial services by 2015.
DFID and GIZ recognised the need for guidance on how to better understand and tackle the key constraints to women's access to finance. We commissioned a toolkit which we tested with country/field staff, and which we hope will be of use to a range of stakeholders who are designing interventions which aim to improve access to a range of financial products and services either for women alone, or as part of broader programmes. The toolkit has been developed by financial sector experts and development specialists, and aims to be accessible to both audiences. The toolkit introduces readers to relevant issues in each step of the programme cycle, including scoping, design, implementation and monitoring and evaluation.
It is our hope that this toolkit will both encourage and enable DFID, GIZ and our partners to reach far more girls and women with better designed financial products and services across the developing world.