Opportunity and avenues to save critical to women’s access to finance
Building Financial Resilience: Why Women Need Better Savings Avenues
Bharatmorningnews.com – The World Bank conducts the Global Findex Database, a demand-oriented assessment examining financial inclusion worldwide. This triennial survey monitors how populations globally interact with monetary services. The most recent 2025 edition gathered perspectives from 141 nations, encompassing 1.45 lakh adult respondents.
Account Ownership vs. Actual Usage
India’s 2025 Findex results indicate that nearly 90% of women now possess formal banking relationships. This represents meaningful progress from the 78% figure documented in 2021. Additionally, dormant accounts among Indian women decreased substantially, dropping from 32% in 2021 to just 18% by 2025. While holding an account marks progress toward economic empowerment, the critical question remains whether this translates into genuine access and utilization of financial products that deliver meaningful outcomes.
Financial resilience—defined as the capacity to withstand monetary disruptions like health emergencies or income reductions—emerges as a vital metric. The survey reveals encouraging trends: more women can now muster emergency capital compared to ten years prior. Nevertheless, approximately three-quarters of women in 2025 described accessing this emergency money within a month as “very difficult.”
The Savings Gap
A particularly troubling statistic shows that merely 11% of women consider their personal savings the primary resource for handling crises. This suggests insufficient buffers against unforeseen costs, pointing to weak financial resilience. Furthermore, the data indicates that 38% of women identify friends or relatives as their chief emergency funding source, compared to roughly 32% of men. This pattern demonstrates that women depend more heavily on informal networks for loans during challenging periods, increasing their susceptibility to income volatility.
Only one in five women surveyed believes they could sustain expenses beyond two months following income loss through savings, borrowing, asset liquidation, or alternative means. Meanwhile, about 65% struggled to cover even a single month’s costs. Borrowing from relatives often compounds ongoing concerns about daily and future financial management. According to Findex findings, women’s primary worries center on monthly expenditures (34%), educational fees (27%), healthcare emergencies (18%), and retirement provisions (12%).
Informal Savings and Structural Barriers
Low savings rates among women represent a fundamental driver of these anxieties. Indian women do accumulate wealth, predominantly through informal mechanisms like cash hoarding, savings groups, or chit funds. The 2026 LXME-EY India report, titled “Unlocking Her Wealth – The Untapped Economy,” highlights that approximately 72% of women avoid using bank accounts for storing savings. Findex data confirms that fewer than a quarter of Indian women utilize banks or comparable institutions for saving purposes. By contrast, 33% of women in developing economies employ formal saving channels. Research demonstrates that when women, particularly those with limited incomes, deposit into formal savings instruments, they gain greater capacity to address routine costs and unexpected events while experiencing enhanced control over their monetary wellbeing.
Several obstacles constrain women’s formal saving capabilities. Low-income female entrepreneurs typically operate micro-enterprises generating small, irregular earnings (UNCDF 2023). Depositing modest sums at banks requires both time and financial resources, revealing structural challenges within formal savings systems. Utilizing bank agents for last-mile deposits often means sacrificing financial privacy from spouses or extended family members.
Behavioral factors also play crucial roles. Women pursue saving objectives such as funding children’s education, covering hospitalization costs, financing household marriages, or investing in commercial ventures (WWB 2021). Balancing immediate household needs, long-term accumulation, and business requirements while maintaining financial autonomy creates substantial difficulty in adhering to consistent savings strategies.
Ultimately, entrenched gendered social expectations compel women to contribute their earnings to husbands and families, resulting in minimal personal financial authority. Limited decision-making power within households prevents women from distinguishing business reserves from domestic expenditures effectively.
In summary, expanding opportunities and creating dedicated pathways for women to save remains essential for improving their access to comprehensive financial services and building lasting economic security.