Bancarización y empoderamiento femenino

Abstract

Access to financial system has shown to have positive effects on poor households. Therefore giving women access to the banking system could generate an increase in their psychological and physical assets and consequently provide additional tools that foster empowerment: decision making in their homes and in their community. This may cause impacts on welfare variables at an individual, household and community level. Using databases from the conditional transfer program in Colombia, Familias en Acción, I investigate the impact of banking over the empowerment of women. This is done taking advantage of the banking process that began in 2009 where saving accounts were opened for beneficiaries. The results show that there is no impact on female empowerment at the household level but in a social level there is a positive effect in terms of participation in community organizations.