Finance and women empowerment in India: Can financial literacy help?

Abstract

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) place considerable focus on women empowerment and access to finance as well. While goal 5 of SDGs targets gender equality and women empowerment, access to finance appears as an enabler of at least eight goals among seventeen SDG goals. Considering significant emphasis both on women empowerment and financial access by the policymakers and multilateral organisations, in this study using India as our country of interest, we examine the relationship between access to finance to women and women empowerment. In this context we also examine whether financial literacy can assist in improving women empowerment and their access to finance.