Trends, Drivers, And Barriers to Women’s Financial Inclusion in Kenya: Evidence of Post-Covid Era

Abstract

Financial inclusion of women has been a wellknown issue that is a vital aspect of economic growth and gender equality in the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals. Kenya is commonly used as a prime example of financial inclusion in SubSaharan Africa as a result of the fast-growing mobile money and digital financial services. Nevertheless, there still exist gender differences in the utilization and result of financial services. The purpose of this paper was to explore the trends, drivers, and barriers to the financial inclusion of women in Kenya after the COVID pandemic period. The objective was to evaluate the differences in account ownership, savings, borrowing, and digital payment on financial inclusion during the post COVID era. A mixed-method research design was used with secondary data provided by the World Bank Global Findex database. A critical interpretive literature review was used to supplement these findings by identifying drivers of change and barriers to inclusion that are likely to persist. The findings indicate that there were significant growths in financial account ownership and use of digital payment by women mostly due to digital financial growth and financial empowerment. Nevertheless, the involvement of women in borrowing money and receiving digital payments is still disproportionate, which is a symptom of socioeconomic restrictions, the lack of digital abilities and gender inequalities in structural aspects. The paper concluded that there have been increments in access, with limited utility for women in different aspects, which hindered financial inclusion