South Africa celebrates Women’s Month in August with the theme “Accelerating Socio-Economic Opportunities for Women’s Empowerment”, and The African Union has declared 2020 to 2030 as the Decade of Women’s Financial and Economic Inclusion.
But, despite advances made in female financial inclusion, women remain the most financially vulnerable demographic. Research shows that even when they have access to a stable, guaranteed monthly income, employed women worry about covering their monthly household expenses.
As the global economy records another year of exceptionally high inflation and low-growth economic activity, consumers in many parts of the world are experiencing what the World Bank calls a cost-of-living crisis.
“These factors have an immense impact on women’s finances, exposing them to debt and inhibiting their financial advancement. What’s more, despite the continued rising cost of living and many households already reeling from the financial strain, women are more vulnerable to debt traps,” says Denise Neethling, marketing manager at earned wage access (EWA) company Paymenow.
Paymenow’s recent data shows that women are using already-earned wages to access cash and purchase necessities such as data and airtime. Female users of the Paymenow app most often cashed out accessed earned wages (56%), followed by use on airtime (17%), data (13%) and vouchers (9%). Further data from the Paymenow 2022 Impact Report showed that women were more likely to report a decrease in borrowing from informal sources than men (98%) when having access to their already-earned wages.
According to Statistics SA, 41,8% of households in South Africa are female-headed. But 64% of South African women cannot stretch their salaries to the end of the month, and fear what will happen should a financial emergency, like an unexpected medical or transport expense, occur.
Neethling says that having an EWA solution incorporated into your organisation can help this underserved market make ends meet and give them access to necessity items including medical and food vouchers, helping them stretch their money that much further each month.