Abstract
Financial inclusion refers to the availability for all individuals of accessible and reasonably priced financial products – including payments, savings, credit, and insurance. The World Bank emphasizes that providing equal access to financial services is crucial for reducing poverty and inequality. Numerous projects are currently underway in several countries to promote financial inclusion. Many of them focus on women, who suffer disproportionately from such discrimination.
This project focuses on 19th-century Sweden to explore the historical gender gap in accessing financial services. It investigates whether and how the gradual establishment of banks affected the ways through which women saved, invested and borrowed money. Did banks provided new opportunities for women? Or did they have a negative impact on their financial capability by disrupting traditional credit networks on which they relied? The analysis is specifically centred around unmarried women. This project aims to address several gaps in existing literature. Female involvement in the credit remains largely unexplored, especially in Scandinavia. Additionally, fairly little is known about the relationship between banks and traditional credit markets. Finally, this research contributes valuable insights into the variation in the level and composition of female wealth over time.
Total project costs: € 29.271,09
Overall funding assigned to UniBS: € 29.271,09