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Abstract

The World Bank's South Asia Region Gender Innovation Lab (SARGIL) is conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis of interventions with direct or indirect effects on measures of women's economic empowerment. The review focuses on changes in labor market outcomes, income, and other empowerment indicators. The goal is to document what has and has not worked for women in the region (covering all countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka), understand the types of interventions implemented, and identify gaps in knowledge and action. Interventions are organized into five categories: Skills, Assets, Financial Products, Care, and Empowerment. This brief summarizes the main findings from the financial products category.

WHAT IS INCLUDED?

Existing systematic reviews have evaluated the provision of financial products within multi-regional contexts but without distinguishing the effects for subgroups of women alone. This review includes experimental and quasi-experimental evidence for policies and financial inclusion programs implemented in any South Asian country and which directly aimed to change women’s economic outcomes or have indirectly done so. The study summarizes the effects of providing access to grants or loans, as well as varying features of credit contracts, such as repayment timelines. In addition, the brief distinguishes between programs targeting current business owners as well as programs that seek to encourage entrepreneurship and discusses why program impacts vary by gender within the South Asia region. The brief concludes by highlighting gaps in the literature and recommending areas for further research.

The review includes English-language studies published between January 1990 and March 2020 across white and gray literature (peer reviewed journals, working papers, program or agency reports, and academic theses, among others) identified via an extensive search of multiple databases. Intervention inclusion was not limited by time, duration, frequency, or method of exposure. Figure 1 summarizes the three-stage identification process. The first stage filtered select papers relevant to the region and programs that were specifically for women or included female beneficiaries. The second stage filtered for intervention type and the third stage for methodology. Two reviewers independently searched and extracted data from the list of finalized articles, including impact effects, design, and intervention components. Additional outcome-specific data, such as units of reporting, coefficient significance, and standard errors were also extracted. If a study reported impact estimates using more than one specification, all were recorded, but only the researchers’ preferred specification is used in this brief.