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Designing for women through data: Insights from the CIS Kenya International Women's Day 2025 Webinar
April 30th, 2025
As part of CIS Kenya’s International Women’s Day 2025 celebrations, Lukania Makunda, FSD Kenya’s Market Information project lead, was part of a panel invited to discuss the theme “Bridging the gender gap in financial inclusion: Empowering women through data-driven solutions.” Speaking on the topic “The role of sex-disaggregated data in designing gender-sensitive financial products,” Lukania highlighted how granular, sex-disaggregated insights can uncover the unique financial behaviours, barriers, and aspirations of women in Kenya.
Drawing from FinAccess data and a recent CIS Kenya, Creditinfo-JICA study – Study on MSME Loan Performance_ analysis of credit data on MSMEs reported, she demonstrated how sex-disaggregated data could shed light on critical issues like limited access to formal credit among women, especially younger entrepreneurs and those in rural areas. She emphasised the importance of integrating women’s social savings behaviour—such as chama participation—into credit scoring models and financial product design.
Lukania also shared examples from local and international markets where behavioural and gender-specific data have driven innovations in insurance, mobile credit, and product bundling, ultimately improving women’s access to financial services.
Her call to action: collaboration across regulators, data aggregators, and financial service providers to make sex-disaggregated data mainstream, enabling tailored solutions that enhance women’s financial inclusion, resilience, and economic empowerment.
Click here for the presentation made at the CIS Kenya’s International Women’s Day 2025 event.
