The Role of Gender in Agent Banking: Evidence from the Democratic Republic of Congo

Richard Chamboko, Robert Cull, Xavier Gine, Soren Heitmann, Fabian Reitzug and Morne Van Der Westhuizen

No 9449, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: This paper uses a unique data set with 1.1 million customer transactions from a microfinanceinstitution in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 2017 to 2018. The paper provides evidence of assortative gendermatching in agent banking transactions, as clients prefer to transact with agents of their own gender. Female clientsshow a robust preference for female agents even when they are less available, particularly when making high-valuetransactions and when they have higher account balances. The underrepresentation of female agents may contribute to thepersistent gender gap in financial access and usage.

Keywords: Gender and Development; Financial Sector Policy; Banks & Banking Reform; Inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-10-21
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mfd and nep-pay
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/32959160 ... epublic-of-Congo.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The role of gender in agent banking: Evidence from the Democratic Republic of Congo (2021)
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:wbk:wbrwps:9449

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().