AFI-BOG WEBINAR ON INTEGRATING GENDER
CONSIDERATIONS INTO COVID-19 POLICY SOLUTIONS
CLOSING REMARKS BY
ELSIE ADDO AWADZI
SECOND DEPUTY GOVERNOR, BANK OF GHANA
14TH SEPTEMBER 2020
Fellow Governors and Deputy Governors of the AFI Network
AFI Executive Director Dr. Alfred Hannig, and AFI Management and Staff
Members of the AFI Network
Invited guests
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour of delivering the closing remarks for what has been a
most remarkable and insightful webinar. I believe this webinar has done
what it sought to do, by providing a platform for sharing experiences and
lessons learnt in the pandemic response so far and helping to chart a way
forward towards more gender-inclusive measures to spur economic
recovery efforts.
At the beginning of this webinar, we heard remarks from Governor Ernest
Addison and Dr. Hannig that were thought-provoking, and which laid a
perfect foundation for the stimulating discussions that ensued. The plenary
sessions and breakout group discussions effectively addressed issues
pertaining to the five key pillars of (i) Women, Regulation, and Regulatory
Institutions; (ii) Women's Participation in Business and in the Job Market;
(iii) Women and Social Protection; (iv) Women and Access to Financial
Services including DFS; and (iv) Women and Consumer Protection.
The experiences that have been shared through today's discussions confirm
that the pandemic has disproportionately affected women, pushing them
out of both formal and informal employment and business, and in some
cases from the financial system, further widening the gender gap in access
to finance. In many countries, COVID-related restrictions came at a higher
price for women than for men, given that more women tend to be involved
in informal, temporary, or part-time work, or in informal business partly due
to the domestic responsibilities they disproportionately shoulder. What is
more, the pre-existing gender gap in access to finance has meant that
many women adversely impacted by the pandemic have little or no savings
to cushion them and have no access to credit or grants to save their
businesses from collapse.
Indeed, this phenomenon is not limited to the developing world. Advanced
economies are also grappling with the distributional consequences of the
pandemic. For example, in a recent Working Paper, the IMF found evidence
that women in Japan were more negatively impacted by the pandemic due
to disparities in the labour market and the fact that more women than men
had to drop out of the job market to take care of their children amidst
massive disruptions to childcare and schools. The IMF advocates for policies
to promote better work-life balance and gender equality to help enhance
female employment opportunities and women's economic empowerment
in the "new normal" after the pandemic is under control.
In the case of emerging and developing economies, these disproportionate
impacts on women are bound to be worse, given the weak social protections
that exist. Our discussions today have also revealed that with the exception
of a few countries in the AFI Network, many policy and regulatory
responses to the pandemic have not considered gender-specific dynamics
of the economic fallout from the pandemic, and in that respect may not
have helped to avoid a widening of the gender gap in access to finance.
How do we then move forward from here to address the widening gender
gap in access to finance? The pandemic may have unleashed
unprecedented hardship on vulnerable groups such as women (particularly
those operating in the informal and MSME sectors), but there are
opportunities to rebuild our economies, and while at it, to rebuild them in a
manner that leads to more inclusion and resilience.
Please permit me at this point, to share some of my own thoughts as to
how we could make progress.
 Promoting gender-inclusive finance is somehow inextricably linked to
addressing the many underlying socio-economic and cultural issues
that create inequalities for women in the job market and in business
(formal or informal). Policies are needed to empower women
economically by addressing issues affecting work-life balance,
employment and income disparities, land ownership, inheritance,
education, healthcare, child care, and elder care, among others.
Greater access to finance for women., necessarily depends on this.

What changes are required in the design of financial services and
products (traditional and digital) and the design of policies and
regulation to correct the additional disparities created by recent
COVID-19 responses? For example, existing literature shows that
women traditionally tend to pay their loans on time. How is this
pandemic changing that narrative and what might be the implications
for women's access to credit going forward? How can financial
institutions better support their female clients to help avoid losing
access to future credit?
 How can we improve the quality of financial intermediation to
address the gender-inclusive finance barriers caused by the COVID-19
pandemic, while not compromising the stability and integrity of our
financial systems?
 How do we galvanise the needed support and mobilise the necessary
resources (technical capacity, peer-to-peer learning, guidance for
stakeholder dialogue, and other support) for the redesign of social
safety nets and financial (and digital) literacy programmes to better
align with gender-inclusive finance? How can we effectively engage
relevant policymakers, legislators, and civil society to advocate for
policies that ultimately promote more gender-inclusive finance?
In sum, the gender-inclusive finance agenda is now more critical than ever
before, and a coordinated effort is required to accelerate action going
forward. Making real progress will require bold action to address the
underlying pre-existing vulnerabilities that have only been exacerbated by
the current pandemic., so that we rebuild a more inclusive, sustainable, and
resilient future.
I trust that members of the AFI Network, with the continued support of AFI,
will, going forward, work assiduously on removing these underlying barriers
to help address the widening gender gap in access to finance. I invite us all
to renew our respective Maya, Denarau, and Kigali commitments, and to
make a big push for tangible progress in gender-inclusive finance.
I note that AFI intends to develop a policy summary note from this webinar
building on the just published COVID-19 GIF Policy paper, which will be
shared with AFI members. This will be very helpful for guiding members'
efforts going forward, as we work towards inclusive, sustainable, and
resilient economic recovery in our various jurisdictions.
On behalf of Governor Ernest Addison, I thank AFI for agreeing to co-host
this very important webinar with the Bank of Ghana. I thank the hard-
working team at the AFI Management Unit, the moderators, panelists,
participants, and all who contributed in diverse ways to make this webinar
the big success that it has been.
Let us all continue to work together to bridge the gap in access to finance
for all.
I thank you for your kind attention.