Motivation
Globally, one third of women are excluded from formal financial systems. Financial inclusion is even lower in developing countries. While some financial products target women, they often fail to consider the social and political constraints, such as household dynamics, that prevent women from fully utilizing them. This results in low uptake and little to no effect on women’s economic empowerment and labor market decisions. This study explores the role of household bargaining on individual and household savings and on women’s economic decision-making in Tanzania.
Objective
This project aims to understand how women can make more independent financial choices and whether this independence leads to improved labor market decisions and economic empowerment. Specifically, the study tests the extent to which keeping money private or shared within the household impacts women’s control over resources and household decisionmaking. To explore the role of household dynamics on resource control, the research team, in collaboration with Innovations for Poverty Action, launched a randomized controlled trial in 2019 with 3,200 female entrepreneurs and their spouses. The study offered women a free e-bank and savings account. Additionally, the research team experimentally varied informing the women’s husband about the account, and inviting the couple to attend a training on household dynamics. As such, the study design incorporates a pure control group and three treatment arms: 1) one where the woman receives an account that is known to her only, 2) one where the woman’s husband is informed of the account, and 3) one where both spouses are aware of the account and are invited to participate in the training.
WEE-DiFine funding supports the addition of semi-structured interviews to this existing RCT. Specifically, midline results indicated that one year later, women who received a bank account were working and earning less than women in the control group. This qualitative research will validate and elucidate these surprising results, and potentially inform next steps in the experiment design. At least 60 interviews will be conducted with randomly selected women from each treatment arm.
