Women as borrowers

Finance needs to find female-targeted products

March 8, Friday, was the International Women’s Day. This is an appropriate occasion to consider the barriers to creating greater equality between the genders in India, which is, by many standards, among the most patriarchal societies and countries in the world. In particular, India has an abysmally low female participation rate in the workforce — and one that, according to many studies, may be dipping lower. Nor is the female labour participation rate satisfactory, or growing, even in the sub-sectors of the “formal” economy where many might have believed the most restrictive social norms might not apply. It is far