Financial Inclusion Practice and the Status of Rural Women in Family: Based on a Field Survey in Gansu China

This paper investigates the impact of financial inclusion on the status of rural women in their families in China. Financial inclusion raises hopes for decreasing poverty and improving gender equality. The former has been supported by many empirical studies, and the latter needs more validation. China attaches great importance to the role of financial inclusion in reducing poverty, but pays less attention to female financial inclusion, and scholars also ignore the relationship between financial inclusion and the status of women in family. This study aims to fill this gap. We propose five research hypotheses that articulate how financial inclusion promotes or improves the status of women in family, and use a field survey in Gansu Province in western China for empirical testing. We find that financial inclusion in China promotes rural women’s development and improves their status in the family, but this is not obvious overall. Specifically, digital payment, financial literacy education and financial management based on fintech partially contribute to women’s family status, while the effect of formal individual savings accounts depends on how women use them. We further find indication that lowering the threshold for loans is not associated with the status of rural women in family, and the household-based microcredit model may hide or even exacerbate gender inequality in families.