Investigating the barriers to accessing formal financial services among rural women in Bangladesh: a quantitative approach

Abstract

Rural women in Bangladesh encounter significant obstacles in accessing institutional or formal financial services such as banking, microfinance, mobile financial services, and insurance. In the existing literature, there is a gap in understanding the quantitative dimensions of these barriers regarding rural Bangladeshi women. Therefore, the objective is to find out these prominent obstacles and how to overcome those with solutions. The study was carried out using quantitative research. Through a questionnaire survey, data was collected from out of 50 rural women in Bangladesh. This study also used a survey data analysis in terms of p-value less than 0.05 to find out the significance of test statistics in statistical interpretation. To gather information, well-structured questionnaires were prepared especially on demographics, financial behavior, and perceived barriers. Before finalizing the questionnaire, we conducted in-depth interviews with the stakeholders; including representatives of government agencies, financial institutions, NGOs, and community leaders to gain insights and refine the research hypotheses. Analyses of the survey data by using SPSS analyzed by multiple regression techniques to find out significant important barriers to accessing financial services. The statistical analysis predicted different potential obstacles to their financial service access and came out with a report of all the survey constraints. The study results guided rational decision-making to empower rural women and pave the way to create awareness and formulate regional outstanding realistic measures to remove the prominent barriers. The study findings have greater potential for ensuring economic empowerment and raising the level of financial inclusion and standard of life of rural women in Bangladesh.