Gender equality is an international right and policy objective affirmed in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. We examine how technology can address barriers to gender equality and financial inclusion in relation to identification, contractual, employment and property rights. The most significant barriers restricting women’s access to finance are in developing countries.

New technologies and digital public infrastructure offer significant opportunities to rearchitect financial systems to economically empower women and drive forward balanced sustainable development. We argue that a functional regulatory approach can remove customary gender-based barriers and technology-driven gender bias to build an inclusive digital financial ecosystem in the post-COVID-19 era.

This is critical for achieving gender equality, female empowerment and women’s unabridged financial and economic participation in developing countries and around the world.