IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/jofsma/v30y2025i1d10.1057_s41264-025-00299-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Empowering sustainable future in the wake of COVID-19 and beyond: insights from a novel gender equality financial inclusion and its determinants in Asia and Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Shama Urooj

    (Huazhong University of Science and Technology)

  • Guang Luo

    (Huazhong University of Science and Technology)

  • Atta Ullah

    (Huazhong University of Science and Technology)

Abstract

Considering how important financial inclusion and gender equality is in the United Nations’ 2030 sustainable development goals (SDGs), we formulate a new gender equality-based financial inclusion index by incorporating its three dimensions: access, use, and quality. Using panel data for year 2020 and 2021 observations from 55 countries in Asia and Africa, we explore whether education, the use of mobile banking technology, and access to credit (borrowing) are related to the financial inclusion index. Additionally, we use the interaction effects of the stringency index to represent the restrictions introduced by the governments during COVID-19. This study employed a “Two stage least square instrumental variable” (2SLS IV) regression econometric approach. Considering the endogeneity issue and confirming its robustness, this research supports that education, borrowing (access to credit), income distribution inequality, use of technology (mobile banking), and the human development index are all factors that influence financial inclusion based on gender equality in Asia and African region. The majority of women in Asia and African regions, due to their lack of education, face problems of access to and actual use of financial services. However, several plans are underway to enhance their accessibility for financial products. Specific plans regarding financial inclusion may be changed to make it easier to use technology and get loans. The study findings are helpful for designing and executing education promotional and women empowering specific policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Shama Urooj & Guang Luo & Atta Ullah, 2025. "Empowering sustainable future in the wake of COVID-19 and beyond: insights from a novel gender equality financial inclusion and its determinants in Asia and Africa," Journal of Financial Services Marketing, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 30(1), pages 1-14, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:jofsma:v:30:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1057_s41264-025-00299-7
    DOI: 10.1057/s41264-025-00299-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41264-025-00299-7
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/s41264-025-00299-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. José De Gregorio & Jong–Wha Lee, 2002. "Education and Income Inequality: New Evidence From Cross‐Country Data," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 48(3), pages 395-416, September.
    2. Ashraf, Badar Nadeem & Goodell, John W., 2022. "COVID-19 social distancing measures and economic growth: Distinguishing short- and long-term effects," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 47(PA).
    3. Faisal Aziz & Salman Masood Sheikh & Ijaz Hussain Shah, 2022. "Financial inclusion for women empowerment in South Asian countries," Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 30(4), pages 489-502, March.
    4. Yan Shen & C. James Hueng & Wenxiu Hu, 2021. "Measurement and spillover effect of digital financial inclusion: a cross-country analysis," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(20), pages 1738-1743, November.
    5. Saeed Pahlevan Sharif & Navaz Naghavi & Hassam Waheed & Kizito Uyi Ehigiamusoe, 2022. "The role of education in filling the gender gap in financial inclusion in low-income economies," International Journal of Emerging Markets, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 18(12), pages 5755-5777, April.
    6. Kass-Hanna, Josephine & Lyons, Angela C. & Liu, Fan, 2022. "Building financial resilience through financial and digital literacy in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(PA).
    7. Sionfou Seydou Coulibaly, 2022. "An analysis of the factors affecting the financial inclusion in Côte d’Ivoire," International Journal of Finance & Banking Studies, Center for the Strategic Studies in Business and Finance, vol. 11(1), pages 69-84, January.
    8. Riddell, W. Craig & Song, Xueda, 2011. "The impact of education on unemployment incidence and re-employment success: Evidence from the U.S. labour market," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 453-463, August.
    9. Javed Hussain & Samia Mahmood & Jonathan Scott, 2019. "Gender, Microcredit and Poverty Alleviation in a Developing Country: The Case of Women Entrepreneurs in Pakistan," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(3), pages 247-270, April.
    10. Daniel Hoechle, 2007. "Robust standard errors for panel regressions with cross-sectional dependence," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 7(3), pages 281-312, September.
    11. Peter J. Morgan, 2022. "Fintech and Financial Inclusion in Southeast Asia and India," Asian Economic Policy Review, Japan Center for Economic Research, vol. 17(2), pages 183-208, July.
    12. Nighat Seema & Fazal Jawad Seyyed & Choudhry Tanveer Shehzad, 2021. "Impact of gender on access to finance in developing countries," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(57), pages 6582-6610, December.
    13. Purva Khera & Miss Stephanie Y Ng & Ms. Sumiko Ogawa & Ms. Ratna Sahay, 2021. "Digital Financial Inclusion in Emerging and Developing Economies: A New Index," IMF Working Papers 2021/090, International Monetary Fund.
    14. Wang, Rui & Luo, Hang (Robin), 2022. "How does financial inclusion affect bank stability in emerging economies?," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(PA).
    15. Ghosh, Saibal & Vinod, D., 2017. "What Constrains Financial Inclusion for Women? Evidence from Indian Micro data," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 60-81.
    16. Amirreza Kazemikhasragh & Antonella Francesca Cicchiello & Stefano Monferrá & Alicia Girón, 2022. "Gender Inequality in Financial Inclusion: An Exploratory Analysis of the Middle East and North Africa," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(3), pages 770-781, July.
    17. Chima M. Menyelim & Abiola A. Babajide & Alexander E. Omankhanlen & Benjamin I. Ehikioya, 2021. "Financial Inclusion, Income Inequality and Sustainable Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan African Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-15, February.
    18. Hermann Hegueu Ndoya & Charly Ondobo Tsala, 2021. "What drive gender gap in financial inclusion? Evidence from Cameroon," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 33(4), pages 674-687, December.
    19. Supriya Garikipati & Susan Johnson & Isabelle Guérin & Ariane Szafarz, 2017. "Microfinance and Gender: Issues, Challenges and The Road Ahead," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(5), pages 641-648, May.
    20. Kebede, Jeleta & Naranpanawa, Athula & Selvanathan, Saroja, 2023. "Financial inclusion and income inequality nexus: A case of Africa," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 539-557.
    21. Rizwan Mushtaq & Omkar Dastane & Muhammad Rafiq & Berna Doğan Başar, 2023. "Women financial inclusion research: a bibliometric and network analysis," International Journal of Social Economics, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 50(8), pages 1169-1185, January.
    22. Thorsten Beck & Asli Demirgüç-Kunt & Ross Levine, 2007. "Finance, inequality and the poor," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 12(1), pages 27-49, March.
    23. João Jungo & Mara Madaleno & Anabela Botelho, 2023. "Controlling corruption in African countries: innovation, financial inclusion and access to education as alternative measures," International Journal of Social Economics, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 50(6), pages 766-786, January.
    24. Sonia Kumari Selvarajan & V. G. R. Chandran, 2024. "Financial Inclusion Trajectories: Geographical Dispersion, Convergence, and Development Implications," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 36(4), pages 897-924, August.
    25. Theresa Mannah-Blankson, 2018. "Gender Inequality and Access to Microfinance: Evidence from Ghana," Journal of African Development, African Finance and Economic Association (AFEA), vol. 20(2), pages 21-33.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Amirreza Kazemikhasragh & Marianna Vanessa Buoni Pineda, 2022. "Financial inclusion and education: An empirical study of financial inclusion in the face of the pandemic emergency due to Covid‐19 in Latin America and the Caribbean," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(3), pages 1785-1797, August.
    2. Jawaher Binsuwadan & Manal Elhaj & Jihen Bousrih & Fatma Mabrouk & Hind Alofaysan, 2024. "The Relationship between Financial Inclusion and Women’s Financial Worries: Evidence from Saudi Arabia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(19), pages 1-19, September.
    3. Sheng Xu & Michael Asiedu & Nana Adwoa Anokye Effah, 2023. "Inclusive Finance, Gender Inequality, and Sustainable Economic Growth in Africa," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 14(4), pages 4866-4902, December.
    4. Cong Minh Huynh & Nam Hoai Tran, 2023. "Financial development, income inequality, and institutional quality: A multi-dimensional analysis," Cogent Economics & Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(2), pages 2242128-224, June.
    5. Jochimsen Beate & Raffer Christian, 2018. "Herausforderungen bei der Messung von Wohlfahrt," Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftspolitik, De Gruyter, vol. 67(1), pages 63-100, May.
    6. Asongu, Simplice A. & Nnanna, Joseph & Acha-Anyi, Paul N., 2020. "Finance, inequality and inclusive education in Sub-Saharan Africa," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 162-177.
    7. Decai Tang & Ziqian Zhao & Jiannan Li & Valentina Boamah, 2024. "Research on coupling coordination degree of digital finance and economic resilience in the Yangtze River Economic Belt," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 120(15), pages 14279-14309, December.
    8. Grohmann, Antonia & Klühs, Theres & Menkhoff, Lukas, 2018. "Does financial literacy improve financial inclusion? Cross country evidence," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 84-96.
    9. Can Sever & Emekcan Yucel, 2021. "Electoral Cycles in Inequality Abstract:," Working Papers 2021/01, Bogazici University, Department of Economics.
    10. Akisik, Orhan & Gal, Graham, 2023. "IFRS, financial development and income inequality: An empirical study using mediation analysis," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 47(2).
    11. Ming Zhong & Jingjing Yu & Syed Anees Haider Zaidi, 2024. "Investigating the Impact of Financial Inclusion on Energy Consumption: Does Corruption Matter?," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 15(2), pages 8797-8814, June.
    12. Steinert, Janina I. & Zenker, Juliane & Filipiak, Ute & Movsisyan, Ani & Cluver, Lucie D. & Shenderovich, Yulia, 2018. "Do saving promotion interventions increase household savings, consumption, and investments in Sub-Saharan Africa? A systematic review and meta-analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 238-256.
    13. Quinonez, Pablo, 2022. "Social spending and income inequality in Latin America. A panel data approach," MPRA Paper 113538, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Tao, Zhe & Wang, Xican & Li, Jing & Wei, Xiaobei, 2023. "How can digital financial inclusion reduces relative poverty? An empirical analysis based on China household finance survey," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 58(PC).
    15. Asongu, Simplice A. & Nnanna, Joseph & Acha-Anyi, Paul N., 2020. "Inequality and gender economic inclusion: The moderating role of financial access in Sub-Saharan Africa," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 173-185.
    16. Simplice A. Asongu & Joseph Nnanna & Paul N. Acha-Anyi, 2020. "Inclusive Education for Inclusive Economic Participation: the Financial Access Channel," Research Africa Network Working Papers 20/019, Research Africa Network (RAN).
    17. Singh, Vinay Kumar & Ghosh, Sajal, 2021. "Financial inclusion and economic growth in India amid demonetization: A case study based on panel cointegration and causality," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 674-693.
    18. Reboul, E. & Guérin, I. & Nordman, C.J., 2021. "The gender of debt and credit: Insights from rural Tamil Nadu," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    19. Simontinti Das & Amrita Chatterjee, 2021. "Role of ICT Dissemination and Digital Finance in Poverty Eradication and Income Inequality Reduction: A Sub-national Level Study from India," Working Papers 2021-210, Madras School of Economics,Chennai,India.
    20. Mazhar Mughal, 2010. "Explaining income inequalities in the developing countries- the role of human capital," Post-Print hal-01881841, HAL.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Financial inclusion; Women empowerment; Education; Economic growth; Gender inequality; Sustainable development goals (SDGs);
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • G53 - Financial Economics - - Household Finance - - - Financial Literacy
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:jofsma:v:30:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1057_s41264-025-00299-7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.