This brief draws on distilled evidence from research and practice from CGIAR and beyond to highlight how to design financial products, approaches and processes to reach, benefit and empower women through financial inclusion.

Women across Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) contribute to food, land and water systems (FLWS) as agricultural producers, entrepreneurs, consumers, and conservationists. They produce 60 to 80 percent of the food in most developing countries, are responsible for half of the world’s food production but remain disproportionately excluded from financial services. 742 million rural women who are also least educated, among the poorest and have low or no access to mobile phones are left out of formal financial services, globally. This exclusion discounts their essential roles in the sector, stymies their potential, and hinders their well-being and that of their households and communities. Barriers to women’s financial inclusion include lack of collateral, cumbersome documentation and procedural requirements, legal discrimination, financial illiteracy, discriminatory social norms, financial risk aversion and lack of gender disaggregated data. Financial service providers generally view rural women as risky or unprofitable, moreover, financial services are poorly adapted for low-literacy, low-income women.

As the demographics of farming communities change and innovations evolve, the role of female extension workers becomes more critical, especially in reaching out to women farmers who are often primary agricultural laborers in rural households and supporting them to adopt new practices and technologies. This study investigates how the roles and challenges of female extension workers are represented in the literature and what assumptions and implications underpin these representations.