Bridging the Gap: The Sustainable Transformative Power of Financial Literacy to Women’s Economic Empowerment in Punjab, Pakistan

Abstract

Among other factors, financial literacy plays a key role in empowering women. The present study has been carried out to assess the sustainable impact of financial literacy on women’s economic empowerment in South Punjab, an area characterized by patriarchal norms. The sample of 150 married women of reproductive age (19-49, M_age=34.43, S.D.= 8.43 ) having at least one child was recruited from district Multan, Muzaffargarh and Dera Ghazi Khan, of South Punjab, Pakistan, using mixed sampling technique. The independent variables were listed as area, age, education, job status of women, married life, earning members of family and three dimensions of financial literacy viz., financial attitude, financial knowledge and financial behavior. Women empowerment (the dependent variable) was categorized as highly empowered, moderately empowered and least empowered. Through ordered logit model, the marginal effects of the different independent variables were estimated. The results indicated that with one  more unit of  financial literacy in terms of two dimension viz., financial knowledge, and financial behavior, women are more likely to be in economically highly  empowered category as compared to moderately and least empowered women. Whereas the impact of financial attitude appeared to be non-significant to affect women empowerment. The variables AGE and EDU are indicated to statistically significantly and negatively associated, and variables viz., area, age, marital life, Jobs and  earning members are positively and statistically significantly and more likely to impact economic empowerment of highly empowered women as compared to moderately and least empowered women. The recommendations in the light of the results have also been discussed.