No man, No cry? Gender equality in access to credit and financial stability

Abstract

Literature has found that women outperform men in terms of loan repayment. We can therefore question whether more gender equality in access to credit fosters financial stability. We test this hypothesis using cross-country data on financial inclusion from the World Bank's Global Findex database and bank-level data on financial stability. We perform regressions at the bank level to check the existence of a relation between the female-to-male ratio of access to credit and financial stability. We find evidence of a negative relation between the gender gap in access to credit and financial stability. Therefore our findings support the view that enhancing access to credit for women relative to men is beneficial for financial stability.