Fintech, Female Employment, and Gender Inequality

Boileau Loko and Yuanchen Yang

No 2022/108, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: Fintech, which delivers financial services digitally, promises to promote financial inclusion and close the gender gap. Using a novel fintech dataset for 114 economies worldwide, this paper shows that fintech adoption significantly improves female employment and reduces gender inequality, the effect being more pronounced in firms without traditional financial access. Fintech not only increases the number and ratio of female employees in the workforce, but also mitigates financial constraints of female-headed firms. Digital divide and poor institutions weaken such benefits. Endogeneity is accounted for by a fixed effects identification strategy. We conclude by providing policy recommendations and outlining avenues for future research.

Keywords: Fintech; Gender Inequality; Employment; effects identification strategy; fintech adoption; service sector; gender gap in Fintech adoption; loan access; fintech firm; Women; Small and medium enterprises; Global; Middle East; Asia and Pacific; Caribbean; Sub-Saharan Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39
Date: 2022-06-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-fdg, nep-fle, nep-gen and nep-pay
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=518871 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2022/108

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi ().