Laurent Weill (University of Strasbourg): Sex, Language, and Financial Inclusion

Laurent Weill (University of Strasbourg): Sex, Language, and Financial Inclusion

Co-author: Francis Osei-Tutu (University of Strasbourg)

Abstract
We test the hypothesis that language gender marking exerts an influence on the gender gap in financial inclusion. The need to make reference to gender in language can lead individuals to draw distinctions between genders. We use the World Bank’s Global Findex database on 117 countries to perform logit estimations at the individual level. We find that women speaking a highly gendered language have a lower probability to own a formal account, access a formal credit, and save in a formal financial institution than women speaking genderless languages. These findings are confirmed in robustness checks controlling for alternative measures of culture and performing estimations at the country-level.

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