## sdn1805

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### Overview
- This study analyzes the intersection of gender and finance across three roles: users of financial services, leaders in financial institutions, and leaders in financial supervision agencies.
- Financial inclusion remains a major challenge for the entire population, but gender gaps persist and are "very persistent" globally, with particularly large regional differences.
- The study compiles and uses gender-disaggregated supply-side data from the IMF’s Financial Access Survey and original data on women in bank leadership and supervision to explore links between gender representation and banking outcomes.
- The compiled data set covers 72 countries from 2001 to 2013 for bank boards, and a new data set covers 115 countries from 1999 to 2017 for banking-supervision agency boards.

### Key findings
- Of the 1.7 billion unbanked adults globally, 56 percent are women.
- In developing economies, women remain 9 percentage points more likely to be unbanked than men (Global Findex 2017).
- Average share of female depositors and borrowers in reporting countries in 2016 was about 40 percent.
- Women hold less than 2 percent of financial institutions’ chief executive officer (CEO) positions.
- Women hold less than 20 percent of executive board seats in banks and banking-supervision agencies worldwide.
- Women represent about 30 percent of economics graduates and about 50 percent of graduates in business and the social sciences (Credit Suisse 2014).
- Econometric analysis suggests that, controlling for relevant bank- and country-specific factors, the presence of women and a higher share of women on bank boards is associated with greater financial resilience (e.g., higher capital buffers).
- A higher share of women on boards of banking-supervision agencies is associated with greater bank stability and higher profitability.
- More than 80 percent of bank observations have less than 20 percent representation of women on their boards, limiting statistical power and causal inference.

### Women as users of financial services (evidence and patterns)
- Demand-side trends and country examples:
  - Global Findex (2017) shows slow closing of gender gaps in account ownership; the gap in developing economies remained essentially unchanged at 9 percentage points from 2011 to 2017.
  - India: account ownership grew by 50 percent; gender gap fell from 20 percentage points to 6 percentage points in six years.
  - Indonesia: share of adults with an account grew from 20 percent in 2011 to 49 percent in 2017, with equitable growth among men and women.
  - Bangladesh: 65 percent of men have an account compared with 36 percent of women; overall account ownership 50 percent.
  - Algeria: 56 percent of men have an account compared with 29 percent of women; overall account ownership 43 percent.
  - Bolivia: account ownership about 55 percent for both men and women.
- Access to mobile phones and internet:
  - In developing economies, 74 percent of women own a mobile phone, compared with 84 percent of men (2017 Gallup World Poll).
  - Globally, 42 percent of adults have internet access; 39 percent for women compared with 45 percent for men.
  - Only 17 percent of developing-economy women used a mobile phone or the internet to access an account in 2017, compared with 21 percent of men (Global Findex).
- Emergency funds and resilience:
  - Women are 11 percentage points less likely than men to come up with emergency funds (equivalent to 1/20 of gross national per capita income).
- Drivers of gender gaps:
  - Recent studies (e.g., Deléchat and others 2018) identify legal discrimination and other factors as barriers to women having bank accounts.

### Supply-side gender-disaggregated data (IMF Financial Access Survey)
- 2016 FAS pilot included 28 countries to capture gender-disaggregated supply-side data.
- Expanded 2017 pilot invited all IMF member countries; 27 countries provided information on gender breakdown of commercial banks’ depositors and borrowers from 2004 to 2016.
- Gender-disaggregated data were mainstreamed in the Financial Access Survey in 2018; the 2018 round has nine series and 12 indicators disaggregated by gender.
- Two-thirds of countries reporting gender-disaggregated data provided historical series.
- Examples of policy-related implications:
  - Chile and Malaysia show steady closing of gender gaps from 2012 to 2016; policy initiatives cited include Malaysia’s Women Entrepreneur Financing Program and Chile’s Simplified Deposit Accounts.
- Policy-data gap:
  - As of end-2017, more than 60 countries made public commitments to headline financial inclusion objectives (often including women), but authorities in less than half of economies had collected gender-decomposed administrative data on financial services.
- FAS scope and coverage:
  - FAS contains 180 time series and 65 indicators for 189 countries spanning more than 10 years.
  - The survey collects provider-side administrative data on deposits, loans, and insurance and on outreach measures (branch network, ATMs, agent outlets).

### Women as providers of financial services and in bank leadership
- Sample and stylized facts:
  - Institution-by-institution board characteristics for more than 800 banks in 72 countries from 2001 to 2013.
  - About half of the banks in the sample are from the United States; about 20 percent are from Europe; the rest from Asia, the Americas, and Africa.
  - The sample includes one-quarter of assets of banks in the United States (corresponding to about 95 percent of the country's GDP) and one-fifth of Polish bank assets (some 15 percent of GDP).
- Key statistics on women’s leadership in banking:
  - Only 2 percent of women serving as CEOs in the banking sector.
  - Only 15 banks out of almost 800 in 72 countries in the sample had women CEOs in 2013.
  - Women hold less than 20 percent of bank board seats in 80 percent of the cases.
  - Only 4 percent of observations have shares greater than 30 percent.
  - Regional and institution-type variation:
    - Highest share in the sample: sub-Saharan Africa; lowest: Latin America and the Caribbean; advanced economies between those extremes.
    - Among types of banks, women’s board participation is highest in savings banks, at more than 45 percent.
    - Nonbank financial services companies, including FinTech firms, show even lower ratios of women leaders than banks.
- Trends over time:
  - East Asia: average representation rose from 2 percent in 2001 to 14 percent in 2013.
  - Europe and Central Asia: increased from about 4 percent to 18 percent over the same period.
  - Latin America: share has not changed significantly.
  - Across types of banks: the share almost doubled in savings banks.

### Empirical methodology for relation between women on boards and bank stability
- Baseline regression:
  - Z_it = β_0 + β_1 ShareWomen_on_Boards_it + β_2 Controls_it + ε_it
- Dependent variable:
  - Bank’s distance-to-distress (z-score), defined as buffers (capital to assets plus return on assets) scaled by volatility of returns (standard deviation of return on assets). Higher distance-to-distress implies higher buffers relative to earnings volatility.
  - Book-value distance-to-distress calculated from Bankscope; robustness checks use market value-based distance-to-distress and other stability indicators including return on assets, capital to assets, volatility of profits, and nonperforming loans ratio.
- Independent variables and controls:
  - Share of women: fraction of board members on the bank’s board of directors (BoardEx).
  - Board financial experience: average (across directors) of the fraction of individual directors’ financial-sector experience to their total professional experience (BoardEx).
  - Other board features: board independence, existence of a risk committee, inclusion of the chief risk officer on the board, fraction of compensation of board members as salary/fixed pay.
  - Country- and bank-level controls: Log GDP per capita (adjusted for purchasing power parity), growth in GDP per capita, bank assets to GDP, nonperforming loans ratio, year fixed effects; some specifications include year*country fixed effects.

### Main empirical results on banks (share of women on bank boards)
- Associations identified:
  - Boards with higher shares of women are associated with better measures of bank stability; results hold when controlling for other board characteristics, bank size, country growth rates, and unobserved bank-level fixed effects.
  - The share of women on bank boards is associated with higher profitability and negatively related to the nonperforming loan ratio.
  - Economic magnitude: average distance-to-distress increased by about 8 since 2008 in the sample. A 0.10 higher women’s share (i.e., a 10 percentage point difference) would be associated with an increase in distance-to-distress similar in magnitude to the improvements observed since the 2008 crisis.
  - Regressions using a dummy for whether the board included at least one woman also support a positive relationship between female presence on boards and greater stability.
- Robustness and additional evidence:
  - Crisis-year analysis: cross-section regressions for 2008 and 2009 show banks with a greater share of women were more stable in 2008 after controls; the coefficient is positive but not statistically significant for 2009.
  - Subsample analyses: results hold for separate US and non-US samples and for commercial banks and bank holding companies.
  - Propensity score matching: less than 5 percent of banks in the sample were in the 50–50 group; matching estimates indicate boards with a 50 percent share of women would have higher distance-to-distress on average than those with no women.

### Findings on supervisory boards (women as financial-sector supervisors)
- Stylized facts:
  - The share of women on governing boards of banking-supervision agencies is low—about 17 percent on average in 2015.
  - Poorer countries exhibited higher shares on average (example: women account for more than 60 percent of board members in the Kingdom of Eswatini; the share in the United States is at 13 percent).
  - Shares are below 20 percent in most regions and have increased only marginally in the post-crisis period, with emerging markets and developing economies showing relatively larger increases than advanced economies.
- Estimation approach:
  - Two sets of cross-country regressions with robust standard errors:
    - Equation (2): relates share of women on supervisory boards to supervisory quality measures (Suppow, prov, BCP, BCP_fincl) for 2011.
    - Equation (3): relates share of women on supervisory boards to banking stability outcomes (distance-to-distress, average for 2011–13), controlling for supervisory quality and other determinants (financial institution access, GDP per capita, nonperforming loan ratio, square of GDP growth).
- Empirical results for supervisors:
  - A higher share of women on supervisory boards is associated with greater banking sector stability (Table 4), holding after controlling for supervisory quality, the level of access to and depth of financial institutions, and governance indicators.
  - The share of women on supervision boards did not have a significant impact on the quality of regulation and supervision: coefficients on Suppow, prov, BCP_fincl, and BCP were not significant (Table 3).
  - The fit of regressions for supervisory boards was weaker than for banking leaders.

### Interpretation, mechanisms, and literature synthesis
- Four hypotheses why gender balance may matter for financial stability:
  1. Women possess traits more consistent with better risk management (innate traits/risk aversion). Evidence is mixed.
  2. Discriminatory selection: women who reach executive levels may be, on average, better qualified.
  3. Diversity factor: mixed-gender boards perform better due to multiplicity of views.
  4. Selection bias: banks that attract more women leaders also have better overall management practices.
- Study conclusions on mechanisms:
  - Tests—including propensity score matching—allow rejection of the pure sample-bias (fourth) hypothesis.
  - Evidence gives some credence to the second and third hypotheses.
  - Empirical support for the first hypothesis is mixed at best.
- Literature highlights:
  - Meta-analyses suggest female board representation is positively related to accounting returns, with effects stronger where shareholder protections are stronger.
  - Financial-sector specific studies show mixed evidence on profitability, risk-taking, loan performance, leverage, and monitoring behavior.

### Policy implications and research needs
- Integrate financial inclusion—including greater access to and use of financial services by women—into macroeconomic and financial policy frameworks to avoid a "silo mentality."
- Narrowing gender gaps would foster greater stability and resilience in the banking system, enhance economic growth, and improve the effectiveness of monetary and fiscal policy.
- Strengthen data collection and reporting:
  - Better gender-disaggregated administrative data are needed from financial service providers to monitor gender gaps and inform policy design.
  - Improved measurement will help identify drivers, causal channels, and conditions that facilitate or hinder women’s entry into leadership roles.
- Further research required:
  - Identify precise causal links and mechanisms through which higher shares of women on bank and supervisory boards contribute to stability.
  - Understand country- and institution-specific conditions that enable higher representation of women in finance leadership.
- IMF commitments and recommended actions:
  - Continue to work with country authorities to improve data availability via the Financial Access Survey.
  - Make gender-disaggregated financial access information an integral, standard part of the Financial Access Survey in the future.
  - Disseminate gender-disaggregated financial access information in official training courses on financial development and financial inclusion.
  - Compile better data to monitor and understand gender gaps in finance; accompanying the study is a data set of women leaders in finance that can be expanded and updated.

### Key statistics and exact figures (preserved)
- 1.7 billion unbanked adults globally; 56 percent are women.
- In developing economies, women are 9 percentage points more likely to be unbanked than men (Global Findex 2017).
- Average share of female depositors and borrowers for gender-disaggregated reporting countries in 2016 was about 40 percent.
- Women hold less than 2 percent of financial institutions’ CEO positions.
- Women hold less than 20 percent of executive board seats in banks and banking-supervision agencies worldwide.
- Women represent about 30 percent of economics graduates and about 50 percent of graduates in business and the social sciences (Credit Suisse 2014).
- Data coverage: 72 countries (2001–2013) for bank boards; 115 countries (1999–2017) for supervisory boards.
- More than 80 percent of bank observations have less than 20 percent representation of women on their boards.
- Only 2 percent of women serving as CEOs in the banking sector; 15 banks out of almost 800 had women CEOs in 2013.
- Only 4 percent of observations have shares greater than 30 percent.
- East Asia: representation rose from 2 percent in 2001 to 14 percent in 2013.
- Europe and Central Asia: increased from about 4 percent to 18 percent from 2001 to 2013.
- Average distance-to-distress increased by about 8 since 2008 (sample).
- A 0.10 higher women’s share is associated with an increase in distance-to-distress similar in magnitude to the post-2008 improvement.
- Less than 5 percent of banks in the sample were in the 50–50 women board group; no banks had women-only boards.
- Share of women on banking-supervision boards: about 17 percent on average in 2015.
- Example shares: Kingdom of Eswatini > 60 percent; United States 13 percent.
- FAS dataset: 180 time series and 65 indicators for 189 countries spanning more than 10 years.
- 2016 FAS pilot participation: 28 countries.
- Expanded 2017 pilot participation (reporting gender breakdown): 27 countries provided information from 2004 to 2016.
- Publication timing: results published March 2018.
- 2018 FAS round: nine series and 12 indicators disaggregated by gender.
- Global Findex survey: about 150,000 adults in 144 economies; 2017 data collected over the 2017 calendar year.
- Gallup World Poll: since 2005 annually conducted surveys of approximately 1,000 people in each of more than 160 economies and in more than 150 languages.
- Target population for Global Findex: age 15 and older.
- Empirical sample periods and shares referenced in tables: 2003–13; 2004–16; 82 percent of observations; 96 percent of observations.

*Source: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY and selected chapter sections, "WOMEN IN FINANCE" (International Monetary Fund).*

### EXECUTIVE SUMMARY __________________________________________________________________________ 5

### EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

### Overview
- This study analyzes the intersection of gender and finance across three roles: users of financial services, leaders in financial institutions, and leaders in financial supervision agencies.
- Financial inclusion remains a major challenge for the entire population, but gender gaps persist and are "very persistent" globally, with particularly large regional differences.
- The study compiles and uses newly available gender-disaggregated supply-side data from the IMF’s Financial Access Survey and original data on women in bank leadership and supervision to explore links between gender representation and banking outcomes.

### Key findings
- Of the 1.7 billion unbanked adults globally, 56 percent are women.
- In developing economies, women remain 9 percentage points more likely to be unbanked than men (Global Findex 2017).
- Average share of female depositors and borrowers in reporting countries in 2016 was about 40 percent.
- Women hold less than 2 percent of financial institutions’ chief executive officer (CEO) positions.
- Women hold less than 20 percent of executive board seats in banks and banking-supervision agencies worldwide.
- Women represent about 30 percent of economics graduates and about 50 percent of graduates in business and the social sciences (Credit Suisse 2014).
- Econometric analysis suggests that, controlling for relevant bank- and country-specific factors, the presence of women and a higher share of women on bank boards is associated with greater financial resilience (e.g., higher capital buffers).
- A higher share of women on boards of banking-supervision agencies is associated with greater bank stability and higher profitability.
- Many low- and middle-income countries have a higher share of women on bank boards and banking-supervision agency boards compared with advanced economies.
- The compiled data set covers 72 countries from 2001 to 2013 for bank boards, and a new data set covers 115 countries from 1999 to 2017 for banking-supervision agency boards.
- More than 80 percent of bank observations have less than 20 percent representation of women on their boards, limiting statistical power and causal inference.

### Women as users of financial services (evidence and patterns)
- Global Findex (2017) and other demand-side surveys show slow closing of gender gaps in account ownership; the gap in developing economies remained essentially unchanged at 9 percentage points from 2011 to 2017.
- Examples of country-level patterns:
  - India: account ownership grew by 50 percent; gender gap fell from 20 percentage points to 6 percentage points in six years.
  - Indonesia: share of adults with an account grew from 20 percent in 2011 to 49 percent in 2017, with equitable growth among men and women.
  - Bangladesh: 65 percent of men have an account compared with 36 percent of women; overall account ownership 50 percent.
  - Algeria: 56 percent of men have an account compared with 29 percent of women; overall account ownership 43 percent.
  - Bolivia: account ownership about 55 percent for both men and women.
- Access to mobile phones and the internet:
  - In developing economies, 74 percent of women own a mobile phone, compared with 84 percent of men (2017 Gallup World Poll).
  - Globally, 42 percent of adults have internet access; 39 percent for women compared with 45 percent for men.
  - Only 17 percent of developing-economy women used a mobile phone or the internet to access an account in 2017, compared with 21 percent of men (Global Findex).
- Emergency funds and resilience:
  - Women are 11 percentage points less likely than men to come up with emergency funds (equivalent to 1/20 of gross national per capita income).
- Drivers of gender gaps:
  - Recent studies (e.g., Deléchat and others 2018) identify legal discrimination and other factors as barriers to women having bank accounts.

### Supply-side gender-disaggregated data (IMF Financial Access Survey)
- The 2016 Financial Access Survey piloted gender-disaggregated supply-side data with 28 countries.
- The expanded pilot in 2017 invited all IMF member countries to report gender breakdowns of commercial banks’ depositors and borrowers; results published March 2018.
- Gender-disaggregated data were mainstreamed in the Financial Access Survey in 2018; the number of reporting countries has been rising.
- Two-thirds of countries reporting gender-disaggregated data provided historical series.
- Average share of female depositors and borrowers for gender-disaggregated reporting countries in 2016 was about 40 percent, with noticeable cross-country differences.
- Examples of policy-related data implications:
  - Chile and Malaysia show steady closing of gender gaps from 2012 to 2016; policy initiatives cited include Malaysia’s Women Entrepreneur Financing Program and Chile’s Simplified Deposit Accounts.
- Policy-data gap:
  - As of end-2017, more than 60 countries made public commitments to headline financial inclusion objectives (often including women), but authorities in less than half of economies had collected gender-decomposed administrative data on financial services.

### Women as providers of financial services and in bank leadership
- Substantial heterogeneity across bank types: the share of women on bank boards is relatively higher in savings banks and lower in investment banks, bank holding companies, and securities firms.
- The supply of qualified women (e.g., education levels noted above) far exceeds their representation in leadership roles.
- Econometric associations suggest more women on bank boards correlate with higher capital buffers and greater bank stability, but causal channels are not identified in this study.

### Women as financial-sector supervisors and regulators
- A new data set covering 115 countries from 1999 to 2017 examines the share of women on banking-supervision agency boards.
- Findings indicate that a higher share of women on supervisory boards is associated with greater bank stability and higher profitability.
- There is considerable variation by GDP per capita and by region in women’s representation in supervision roles.

### Policy implications and research needs
- Integrate financial inclusion—including greater access to and use of financial services by women—into macroeconomic and financial policy frameworks to avoid a "silo mentality."
- Narrowing gender gaps would foster greater stability and resilience in the banking system, enhance economic growth, and improve the effectiveness of monetary and fiscal policy.
- Strengthen data collection and reporting:
  - Better gender-disaggregated administrative data are needed from financial service providers to monitor gender gaps and inform policy design.
  - Improved measurement will help identify drivers, causal channels, and conditions that facilitate or hinder women’s entry into leadership roles.
- Further research required:
  - Identify precise causal links and mechanisms through which higher shares of women on bank and supervisory boards contribute to stability.
  - Understand country- and institution-specific conditions that enable higher representation of women in finance leadership.

*Source: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY, "WOMEN IN FINANCE" (International Monetary Fund).*

### 17.      Turning to the effects of financial inclusion, at the micro level, there is growing

### sdn1805 - 17.      Turning to the effects of financial inclusion, at the micro level, there is growing

### Micro-level effects of financial inclusion
- Evidence of benefits to increasing women’s access to financial services:
  - Financially empowered women are more likely to improve their family’s welfare (Sanyal 2014).
  - Access to insurance helped women farmers in Burkina Faso and Senegal increase yields and better manage food security (Delavallade and others 2015).
  - Women in the Philippines who used a savings account reported greater control over household decisions and increased spending on needed items (Ashraf, Karlan, and Yin 2009).
  - In Kenya, women merchants who received a basic account invested more in their businesses (Dupas and Robinson 2013).
  - Women-headed households in Nepal spent 20 percent more on education and 15 percent more on meat and fish after receiving a savings account (Prina 2015).
- Broader survey findings:
  - Women’s financial inclusion might enhance the growth-promoting potential of finance, help reduce income inequality, and benefit the next generation by improving the health and education of children.

### Macro-level effects of financial inclusion
- Key empirical findings:
  - Households’ access to finance has a strong positive relationship with overall economic growth (Sahay and others 2015).
  - The relationship between financial depth (the volume of financial services) and growth is bell-shaped, implying a trade-off between growth and depth at higher depth levels.
  - There is no trade-off between growth and higher levels of financial access; economic growth always rises with financial access.
  - Re-running Sahay and others (2015) regressions with gender-decomposed data yields the same results for increasing women users of services.
  - Inequality in financial access is significantly related to income inequality (Aslan and others 2017).
  - IMF (2016) suggests the link between gender equality in financial inclusion and income equality may operate through increased female labor force participation enabled by accounts and access to borrowing.

### Financial inclusion, credit extension, and stability (trade-offs)
- IMF staff analysis (Sahay and others 2015):
  - The relationship between the share of borrowers in adult population and bank stability rises initially and then falls as the number of borrowers increases.
  - Better supervision reduces the growth–stability trade-off substantially (illustrated in Figure 4).
  - Regressions re-run with gender-decomposed data show the relationship is statistically the same for men and women.
- Gender composition of borrowers (global figures cited):
  - 9 percent of women worldwide borrowed from financial institutions in 2017, compared with 12 percent of men.
  - Given fewer women borrowers than men, an increase in the share of women borrowers is more likely to be associated with an increase in financial stability (as illustrated in Figure 4).

### Women as providers of financial services — literature review (summary)
- Female representation in senior corporate management is low across countries and industries (International Labour Organization 2015; Catalyst 2014; Credit Suisse 2012, 2014; El  borgh-Woytek and others 2013; Wolfers 2006).
- Meta-analyses (Post and Byron 2015; Pletzer and others 2015) suggest female board representation is positively related to accounting returns; effect stronger in countries with stronger shareholder protections.
- Financial-sector specific findings:
  - Some studies suggest companies with more women board members have higher profitability and better stock-price performance (Credit Suisse 2012; Catalyst 2014; Christiansen and others 2016).
  - Funds majority-owned by women returned 6 percent in 2013 compared with a loss of 1.1 percent for the industry (Rothstein Kass Institute 2013).
  - Evidence from a commercial bank in Albania: loans screened by female loan officers were less likely to turn problematic (Beck, Behr, and Guettler 2013).
- Studies on executive behavior and risk:
  - Firms run by female CEOs have lower leverage, less volatile earnings, and a higher chance of survival (Faccio, Marchica, and Mura 2016).
  - Male executives undertake more acquisitions and issue debt more often than female executives; acquisitions and debt issues by firms with female executives have higher announcement returns (Huang and Kisgen 2013).
  - Female directors are found to be more diligent monitors and to demand more audit efforts than male directors (Adams and Ferreira 2009; Gul, Srinidhi, and Tsui 2012).
- Countervailing evidence:
  - Some studies find gender diversity associated with more risk taking around the global financial crisis (Adams and Ragunathan 2013; Berger, Kick, and Schaeck 2014).

### Four hypotheses on why gender balance may matter for financial stability
- Hypothesis 1: Women possess traits more consistent with better management of risks in financial institutions (innate traits/risk aversion). Evidence on this is mixed.
  - PEW (2014): 29 percent thought women would do a “better job” running a large bank, 19 percent thought men would, 52 percent agnostic.
  - Experimental studies tend to find women more risk averse (Croson and Gneezy 2009), but results depend heavily on situation and elicitation method (Niederle 2014; Nelson 2015).
  - Neuroeconomic studies link testosterone levels to risk-taking (Sapienza, Zingales, and Maestripieri 2009).
  - Corporate director surveys suggest female directors may be slightly more risk loving than male directors (Adams and Funk 2012).
- Hypothesis 2: Discriminatory selection and higher average qualifications of women who do get hired into leadership positions—leading to higher-quality boards.
- Hypothesis 3: Diversity factor—mixed-gender boards perform better due to multiplicity of views and offsetting weak corporate governance (Hillman, Shropshire, and Cannella 2007; Gul, Srinidhi, and Tsui 2012).
- Hypothesis 4: Selection bias—banks that attract more women leaders may also have better overall management practices; women’s presence is an indicator rather than the cause of stability.
- The study notes that a positive association between gender balance on boards and higher banking stability is more likely linked to hypotheses 2–4; evidence for hypothesis 1 is mixed.

### Stylized facts on women leaders in finance (data set description and summary statistics)
- Data set:
  - Institution-by-institution board characteristics for more than 800 banks in 72 countries from 2001 to 2013.
  - Data set builds on IMF (2014) and updates/expands Sahay and others (2017).
- Sample composition:
  - About half of the banks in the sample are from the United States; about 20 percent are from Europe; the rest are from Asia, the Americas, and Africa.
  - The Middle East is largely absent due to lack of data and low representation of women in top positions.
  - The sample of banks is not necessarily representative of each domestic banking system, but in many instances total bank assets cover a substantial share of GDP:
    - The sample includes one-quarter of assets of banks in the United States (corresponding to about 95 percent of the country's GDP).
    - The sample includes one-fifth of Polish bank assets (some 15 percent of GDP).
- Key statistics on women’s leadership in banking (2013 and sample-wide findings):
  - Only 2 percent of women serving as CEOs in the banking sector.
  - Only 15 banks out of almost 800 in 72 countries in the sample had women CEOs in 2013.
  - Women hold less than 20 percent of bank board seats in 80 percent of the cases.
  - Only 4 percent of observations have shares greater than 30 percent.
  - Regional and institution-type variation:
    - Highest share in the sample: sub-Saharan Africa; lowest: Latin America and the Caribbean; advanced economies between those extremes.
    - Among types of banks, women’s board participation is highest in savings banks, at more than 45 percent.
    - Nonbank financial services companies, including FinTech firms, show even lower ratios of women leaders than banks.
  - Trends over time:
    - East Asia: average representation rose from 2 percent in 2001 to 14 percent in 2013.
    - Europe and Central Asia: increased from about 4 percent to 18 percent over the same period.
    - Latin America: share has not changed significantly.
    - Across types of banks: the share almost doubled in savings banks.

### Empirical methodology for relation between women on boards and bank stability
- Baseline regression (as estimated):
  - Z_it = β_0 + β_1 ShareWomen_on_Boards_it + β_2 Controls_it + ε_it
- Dependent variable:
  - Bank’s distance-to-distress (z-score), defined as buffers (capital to assets plus return on assets) scaled by volatility of returns (standard deviation of return on assets). Higher distance-to-distress implies higher buffers relative to earnings volatility.
  - Book-value distance-to-distress calculated from balance sheet data from Bankscope (standard measure in the literature).
  - Robustness checks use other stability indicators, including market value-based distance-to-distress (which reduces sample size by two thirds because it requires traded securities).
  - Components of distance-to-distress examined by re-estimating equation (1) using return on assets, capital to assets, and volatility of profits as dependent variables. Nonperforming loans ratio used as another alternative dependent variable.
- Independent variables and controls:
  - Share of women: fraction of board members on the bank’s board of directors.
  - Board characteristics:
    - Board financial experience: measured by the average (across directors) of the fraction of individual directors’ financial-sector experience to their total professional experience.
    - Other board features: board independence, existence of a risk committee, inclusion of the chief risk officer on the board, and fraction of compensation of board members as salary/fixed pay (noted effects from IMF 2014).
  - Country- and bank-level controls:
    - Log GDP per capita, adjusted for purchasing power parity.
    - Growth in GDP per capita.
    - Bank assets to GDP.
    - Nonperforming loans ratio (share of total gross loans).
    - Year fixed effects; some specifications include year*country fixed effects to capture country time trends (Annex II).

*Italic: Source — IMF staff analysis and compiled data as presented in the provided content.*

### 37.      The study tested for the relationship between the share of women and bank stability.

### 37.      The study tested for the relationship between the share of women and bank stability.

### Empirical approach
- Pooled regressions were run controlling for bank-specific, country-specific, and cyclical characteristics; some specifications included year effects to control for common conditions such as the global financial crisis.
- Separate regressions were estimated for 2008 and 2009 to examine whether banks with more women on bank boards fared differently during the crisis, controlling for other characteristics.
- Regressions also examined subsamples (US vs non-US banks; commercial banks vs bank holding companies) and included lagged distance-to-distress to account for persistence in bank stability.
- Propensity score matching (following Abadie and Imbens 2011) was used to address selection bias by estimating the probability of having a board with 50 percent women based on observable characteristics (e.g., bank size, financial experience of the board) and constructing a control group with no women on the board.

### Main empirical results on banks (share of women on bank boards)
- Boards with higher shares of women are associated with better measures of bank stability; results hold when controlling for other board characteristics, bank size, country growth rates, and unobserved bank-level fixed effects.
- The positive association is identified in pooled regressions and when including a separate intercept for each bank type; the coefficient remains when bank fixed effects are included.
- On components of the distance-to-distress:
  - The share of women on bank boards is associated with higher profitability (pooled regressions with separate intercepts for bank type; see Annex II).
  - Higher profitability appears to play a key role in increasing the distance-to-distress; for a similar capital ratio and even with higher volatility, measured buffers are greater.
  - The share of women is negatively related to the nonperforming loan ratio.
- Economic magnitude: average distance-to-distress increased by about 8 since 2008 in the sample. Based on estimates in Table 2, a 0.10 higher women’s share (i.e., a 10 percentage point difference) would be associated with an increase in distance-to-distress similar in magnitude to the improvements observed since the 2008 crisis.
- Presence versus share:
  - Regressions using a dummy for whether the board included at least one woman also support a positive relationship between female presence on boards and greater stability; all else equal, a bank with female representation on its board has on average a greater distance-to-distress.

### Robustness checks and additional evidence
- Crisis-year analysis:
  - Cross-section regressions for 2008 and 2009 (and pooled over the two-year period) show that banks with a greater share of women were more stable in 2008 after controls.
  - The coefficient is positive but not statistically significant for 2009 (Annex II).
- Subsample analyses:
  - Results for distance-to-distress continue to hold when regressions are estimated separately for US and non-US banks.
  - Results are similar when using subsamples of commercial banks and bank holding companies (Annex II).
- Propensity score matching:
  - Less than 5 percent of banks in the sample were in the 50–50 group (and no banks had women-only boards).
  - Matching estimates indicate that boards with a 50 percent share of women would have higher distance-to-distress on average than those with no women, providing evidence against the sample bias hypothesis (Annex II).

### Findings on supervisory boards (women as financial-sector supervisors)
- Stylized facts:
  - The share of women on governing boards of banking-supervision agencies is low—about 17 percent on average in 2015.
  - Poorer countries exhibited higher shares on average (example: women account for more than 60 percent of board members in the Kingdom of Eswatini; the share in the United States is at 13 percent).
  - Shares are below 20 percent in most regions and have increased only marginally in the post-crisis period, with emerging markets and developing economies showing relatively larger increases than advanced economies.
- Estimation approach:
  - Two sets of cross-country regressions with robust standard errors:
    - Equation (2): relates share of women on supervisory boards to supervisory quality measures (Suppow, prov, BCP, BCP_fincl) for 2011.
    - Equation (3): relates share of women on supervisory boards to banking stability outcomes (distance-to-distress, average for 2011–13), controlling for supervisory quality and other determinants (financial institution access, GDP per capita, nonperforming loan ratio, square of GDP growth).
- Empirical results for supervisors:
  - A higher share of women on supervisory boards is associated with greater banking sector stability (Table 4); this holds after controlling for supervisory quality, the level of access to and depth of financial institutions, and governance indicators.
  - The share of women on supervision boards did not have a significant impact on the quality of regulation and supervision: coefficients on Suppow, prov, BCP_fincl, and BCP were not significant (Table 3).
  - The fit of regressions for supervisory boards was weaker than for banking leaders, consistent with a relatively less direct role of regulators and supervisors in producing stability.

### Interpretation and mechanisms
- The study outlines four potential mechanisms by which gender balance could matter for stability:
  1. Women may possess traits that lead to better risk management.
  2. Discriminatory hiring could mean women who reach executive levels are, on average, better qualified.
  3. Mixed-gender boards may perform better due to diversity of views.
  4. Less gender-biased hiring may correlate with better-managed institutions (selection effect).
- Empirical evidence in this study:
  - Tests—including propensity score matching—allow rejection of the pure sample-bias (fourth) hypothesis.
  - Evidence gives some credence to the second and third hypotheses.
  - Empirical support for the first hypothesis (women being inherently better risk managers) is mixed at best.

### Key statistics and exact figures (preserved)
- Average distance-to-distress increased by about 8 since 2008 (sample).
- A 0.10 (10 percentage point) higher women’s share is associated with an increase in distance-to-distress similar to the post-2008 improvement.
- Less than 5 percent of banks in the sample were in the 50–50 women board group; no banks had women-only boards.
- Share of women on banking-supervision boards: about 17 percent on average in 2015.
- Example shares: Kingdom of Eswatini > 60 percent; United States 13 percent.
- Across regions, less than 20 percent of banks’ boards are women; less than 2 percent of banks had women CEOs.

### Conclusions and policy implications
- Lower gaps in representation of women in bank leadership roles are associated with greater bank stability (higher capital buffers, lower nonperforming loans, higher distance-to-distress), controlling for bank size, GDP per capita, experience of board members, and other characteristics.
- The observed higher stability is likely due to beneficial effects of greater diversity of views and discriminatory hiring practices that lead to hiring better qualified or more experienced women.
- Findings strengthen the case for financial inclusion for women to enhance economic growth, reduce income inequality, and foster financial stability.
- Further research is needed to draw stronger causal links and to explore why some countries and institutions place more women in leadership roles.

### Data and monitoring actions recommended by the paper
- Compile better data to monitor and understand gender gaps in finance.
- IMF commitments:
  - Continue to work with country authorities to improve data availability via the Financial Access Survey.
  - Make gender-disaggregated financial access information an integral, standard part of the Financial Access Survey in the future.
  - Disseminate gender-disaggregated financial access information in official training courses on financial development and financial inclusion.
- Accompanying this study is a data set of women leaders in finance that can be expanded and updated.

*Source: Authors’ estimates and discussion in the chapter titled “Women in Finance” (empirical results and conclusions) from the provided content.*

### 57.      The study also advocates the need for macroeconomic policymaking to integrate

### sdn1805 - 57.      The study also advocates the need for macroeconomic policymaking to integrate

### Macroeconomic policy integration: main argument
- The study advocates integrating financial inclusion and stability into macroeconomic policymaking to ensure better economic and financial outcomes.
- Financial inclusion frequently proceeds on a separate track, “more as a means to address social goals than mainstream macroeconomic goals,” creating a “silo mentality.”
- There is a case for financial inclusion for women—including greater access to and use of financial services by women—to:
  - enhance economic growth,
  - reduce income inequality, and
  - preserve financial stability.
- When financial systems become more inclusive, they can broaden financial markets and could make monetary, fiscal, macroprudential, and macrostructural policies more effective.

### Annex I — Data on women users of finance: Financial Access Survey (FAS)
- The Financial Access Survey is an annual survey managed by the IMF’s Statistics Department and funded by donors.
- Scope and measurement:
  - Collects comparable time-series data on geographical outreach and use of basic financial services provided by resident financial corporations to resident customers in a country.
  - Outreach approximated by branch network, ATMs, and number of agent outlets for mobile money providers.
  - Use measured for three key financial services: deposits, loans, and insurance.
  - Provides data for households and small and medium enterprises.
- Dataset size and sources:
  - The survey contains 180 time series and 65 indicators for 189 countries spanning more than 10 years.
  - Based on administrative sources (national central bank and other statistical authorities) and derived from provider-side information.
- Gender-data pilot and mainstreaming:
  - The 2016 FAS included a pilot to capture the financial access gender data gap; the pilot included the participation of 28 countries.
  - The 2016 pilot revealed that in almost half of the participating economies, financial service providers had access to their customers’ gender information.
  - An expanded pilot in 2017 invited all IMF country members to report the gender breakdown of commercial banks’ depositors and borrowers; 27 countries provided information on this breakdown from 2004 to 2016.
  - Results of the expanded pilot were published on the Financial Access Survey website in March 2018 (IMF 2018).
  - In 2018, gender-disaggregated data were mainstreamed into the survey. The 2018 round has nine series and 12 indicators disaggregated by gender.
- Annex figure content (reporting counts by year):
  - Number of countries reporting data on female depositors by year for 2004–2016 (chart axis showing 0 to 18).
  - Number of countries reporting data on female borrowers by year for 2004–2016 (chart axis showing 0 to 30).

### Annex I — Data on women users of finance: World Bank Global Findex
- The Global Findex database complements the FAS by compiling demand-side data on how adults save, borrow, make payments, and manage risk.
- Launch and methodology:
  - Launched with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; published every three years since 2011.
  - Data collected in partnership with Gallup, Inc., through nationally representative surveys of about 150,000 adults in 144 economies.
  - The 2017 survey was carried out over the 2017 calendar year by Gallup, Inc., as part of its Gallup World Poll.
  - Gallup World Poll has since 2005 annually conducted surveys of approximately 1,000 people in each of more than 160 economies and in    more than 150 languages, using randomly selected, nationally representative samples.
  - Target population: the entire civilian, noninstitutionalized population age 15 and older.
- Data decompositions:
  - The Global Findex offers decompositions by individual characteristics, including gender, age, income, employment, living area (urban versus rural), and education level.
- For a summary of the data and key findings, see Demirgüç-Kunt and others (2018).

### Annex II — Data on women leaders in finance
- The dataset on women leaders in finance is an updated and expanded version of data compiled by Sahay and others (2017) and is made available online with the paper.
- Table A1: Variables used in the empirical analysis (selected items preserved as in source)
  - Dependent variables:
    - Distance-to-distress (Z-score): Sum of capital to assets and return on assets, divided by standard deviation of return on assets. Sign switched so that higher values mean higher risk. Data source: Bankscope.
    - NPL nonperforming loan ratio (in percent). Data source: Bankscope.
    - Daily equity return volatility: Higher values mean higher risk. Data source: Thomson Reuters Datastream.
    - Weekly equity return volatility: Higher values mean higher risk. Data source: Thomson Reuters Datastream.
  - Explanatory variables:
    - Share of women: The share of women directors on bank boards. Data source: BoardEx.
    - Financial experience: Average of independent board members’ financial experience as a share of their total professional experiences. Data source: BoardEx.
    - Board experience: Total number of years that all the board members have spent on the board. Data source: BoardEx.
    - Board independence: Share of independent board members. Data source: BoardEx.
    - Chief risk officer (CRO) on board: Dummy = 1 if the CRO is a board member. Data source: BoardEx.
    - Risk committee: Dummy = 1 if there is a board risk committee. Data source: BoardEx.
    - Salary: Share of salary in total CEO compensation. Data source: BoardEx.
    - Total bank assets: Total bank assets to GDP. Data sources: Bankscope; IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO) database.
    - Log GDP per capita (adjusted for purchasing power parity). Data source: WEO database.

### Empirical tables and robustness checks (as listed)
- Table A2. Association between the Share of Women on Bank Boards and Bank Stability When the Share of Women Is 20 Percent or Less (82 percent of observations, 2003–13).
- Table A3. Association between the Share of Women on Bank Boards and Bank Stability When Share of Women Is 30 Percent or Less (96 percent of observations, 2003–13).
- Table A4. Subsample Robustness: US and Commercial Banks.
- Table A5. Bank Stability in Bank Boards with 50 percent vs. 0 percent of Women: Nearest Neighbor Matching Average Treatment Effects.
  - Notes: Nearest neighbor matching is used to find the average treatment effects. Different metrics are used for matching. The logit regressions in the first stage in column (1) are based on time on board, financial experience of the board members, nationality mix, and CRO on board of the banks.
- Table A6. Association between the Share of Women on Bank Boards and Bank Stability Components (Full Sample: 2003–13).
- Table A7. Association between the Share of Women on Bank Boards and Bank Stability (2008 and 2009).
- Table A8. Share of Women in Supervisory Agencies and Bank Stability: Data Sources.

### Key quantitative points and sample coverage (preserved verbatim)
- FAS dataset: 180 time series and 65 indicators for 189 countries spanning more than 10 years.
- 2016 FAS pilot participation: 28 countries.
- Expanded 2017 pilot participation (reporting gender breakdown): 27 countries provided information from 2004 to 2016.
- Publication timing: results published March 2018.
- 2018 FAS round: nine series and 12 indicators disaggregated by gender.
- Global Findex survey: about 150,000 adults in 144 economies; 2017 data collected over the 2017 calendar year.
- Gallup World Poll: since 2005 annually conducted surveys of approximately 1,000 people in each of more than 160 economies and in    more than 150 languages.
- Target population for Global Findex: age 15 and older.
- Empirical sample periods and shares referenced in tables: 2003–13; 2004–16; 82 percent of observations; 96 percent of observations; comparison of 50 percent vs. 0 percent women on bank boards.

*International Monetary Fund. sdn1805 - 57. The study also advocates the need for macroeconomic policymaking to integrate (extracted content).*

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_Source: https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/sdn/2018/sdn1805.pdf_