Mobile Banking and Women Empowerment - A field study in Kenya

Abstract: This study investigates how the usage of a Kenyan mobile banking service called M-pesa affects women empowerment and if different forms of usage have a significant effect. This is done through the distribution of a questionnaire in Nairobi, Kenya. Through both a OLS and a 2SLS model the answers about a person’s usage of M-pesa is then run against a constructed a women empowerment index and against control variables which are also collected in the questionnaire. The main findings of this study is that there are no conclusive evidence for that a higher usage usage of M-pesa have a positive effect on women empowerment. Furthermore this paper doesn’t finds any evidence for that the different usages of M-pesa individually has a conclusively positive effect on women empowerment.