Women’s Empowerment Archives - G2P Network

Beyond India’s Lockdown: PMGKY Benefits During the COVID-19 Crisis and the State of Digital Payments

Brian Webster — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 20:26:52 +0000

India imposed a lock-down in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 and began a gradual re-opening in June. A telephonic survey in April examined the early effectiveness of information and the massive PMGKY social protection program (Policy Paper 217). This paper analyzes a second-round survey, conducted six months later. Logistical and information constraints had relaxed, and incomes and jobs had begun to stabilize for some. There were not strong indications of differential access to benefits by income or location, but constraints to providing public employment had tightened in the face of increased demand, resulting in greater job rationing. Men made more use of digital channels, with a clear smartphone ownership hierarchy between men and women; this divide carried over into the growing autonomous use of digital payments which is conditioned on access to smartphones. Survey results confirm strong local agglomeration effects in digital payments, mirroring the general pattern with higher use in states hosting India’s major technology hubs. At the same time, trust-based concerns reduced the use of assisted digital cash-outs through agents.

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Identification for Development (ID4D) and Digitalizing G2P Payments (G2Px) 2021 Annual Report

Brian Webster — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 15:00:35 +0000

This annual report summarizes the work produced by the World Bank’s Identification for Development and G2Px initiatives in 2021. It highlights individual country experiences such as in Togo and Lesotho, as well as their insights regarding gender.

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Government to Person Transfers: An On-Ramp to Financial Inclusion?

Brian Webster — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 22:21:59 +0000

This report seeks to answer the question: Can G2P payments provide an on-ramp to financial inclusion? It does so by focusing on the confluence of three different movements to improve the economic well-being of low-income individuals and households in developing countries: financial inclusion; digital financial services; and government-to-person payments (G2P payments). Its findings suggest that currently there is little indication that G2P payments do result in increased financial inclusion through any sort of direct mechanism related to the delivery of those payments through formal financial service providers.

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Advancing Women’s Digital Financial Inclusion

Brian Webster — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 22:09:03 +0000

Digital finance has expanded opportunities for millions of women across the globe, yet there remains much work to do to achieve gender equality in financial services. This report discusses policies for achieving equal financial inclusion, including the role of digital G2P.

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Reaching Financial Equality for Women: A 10 Point Action Plan for Governments and Businesses to Build Back Stronger After COVID-19 by Prioritizing Women’s Digital Financial Inclusion

Brian Webster — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 15:58:52 +0000

During the past decade, women’s economic and financial inclusion has become an increasing priority for governments and companies, driven by evidence that its benefits range from increased agricultural output, to greater business resilience, customer retention, and GDP growth. Despite this evidence, the unfortunate truth is that women throughout the world lack access to the basic tools necessary for digital financial inclusion. This report provides 10 steps to help remedy the situation, including digitizing G2P payments, ensuring universal ID, and ending the gender gap in mobile phone ownership.

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Gender and Safety Nets – Priorities for Building Back Better

Brian Webster — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 20:44:10 +0000

This note published by the World Bank presents four priorities to build stronger safety nets that help address gender inequality. 1) Maintain and extend coverage among vulnerable groups, prioritizing women and taking the specific needs of women into account. 2) Invest in adaptive delivery systems that recognize women and girls’ specific vulnerabilities. 3) Leverage digital technologies to reach and empower women in safety net programs. 4) Invest in cash plus approaches to tackle multiple gender gaps simultaneously.

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UN Principles for Responsible Digital Payments: Building Trust, Mitigating Risks & Driving Inclusive Economies

Brian Webster — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 14:27:38 +0000

This Better Than Cash Alliance report details principles for building responsible digital payment systems. An update to BTCA’s 2016 publication, the report emphasizes the importance of consumer trust driven by reliability, interoperability between services, and conscious efforts to include marginalized communities, particularly women.

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Inclusive Information Systems for Social Protection: Intentionally Integrating Gender and Disability

Anit Mukherjee — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 16:27:46 +0000

Digital information systems serving the social protection sector, and especially social assistance, are increasingly prominent and will continue to be, as is the case within all other sectors. “Why? Because the ability of a country to care for its people and respond to their lifecycle needs depends on its ability to identify those who are in need, enroll them, provide tailored benefits and services, and follow up to cater to evolving circumstances”. Governments also need to be able to monitor programme implementation and impact, feeding into longer-term decisions on design and resource allocation. “All of these actions require accessible, dynamic and real-time data and information exchange if the goal of universal coverage is to be achieved” (Chirchir and Barca, 2019).

The coverage (% of the population included in the information system), relevance (amount/type of data they store), and accessibility (e.g. level of interoperability/data sharing across the government data ecosystem) of these administrative data systems has also been increasing in many countries2 – posing important opportunities and challenges to policy-makers. The question is how to develop these systems in a way that is inclusive and right-based, leveraging technology “to ensure a higher standard of living for the vulnerable and disadvantaged” (Alston, 2019) rather than becoming a further barrier to inclusion. To illustrate the point this paper specifically focuses on gender and disability inclusion, while acknowledging similar considerations apply to all other forms of (intersectional) exclusion.

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Let Her Choose: Supercharging G2P for Women

Anit Mukherjee — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 16:59:03 +0000

Donors and governments around the world recognize the power of government-to-person (G2P) payments to address poverty and benefit women. A growing number of innovations show how to make payments delivery more valuable with improvements from biometrics, form factors, delivery channels (agents/ATMs) and means of communication.

While many improvements matter, we hold that the most valuable innovation is in delivery systems that empower women to choose how to receive their cash. G2P programs often reach millions of people and have the potential to stimulate private providers to competitively extend services further. However, most often governments require beneficiaries to use a single G2P solution. A better approach is when governments stimulate a marketplace of many competing solutions. What if they enabled women to select what works best for them from among several solutions and to reward high-quality service providers with their business?

Emerging evidence (and common sense) gives us reason to be optimistic that when women can choose where, when and how to receive their funds, their gains are amplified. Women know what they need from G2P payments, and policy makers can make dramatic strides to meet those needs. As countries like India, Kenya, Zambia and others demonstrate, the pathway ahead is ever more clear: let her choose.

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Will the Pandemic Exacerbate or Mitigate the Digital Gender Gap?

admin — Mon, 11 Jan 2021 20:21:37 +0000

As the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the world, economies were forced into lockdown to help slow the transmission of the virus. These measures had a devastating effect on livelihoods, particularly those of low-income households, and women, who face a unique set of challenges. The pandemic has deepened the gender divide along with income, assets, jobs, and livelihoods.

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