Does Financial Literacy Empower Women? Empirical Evidence from Chitwan, Nepal

Abstract

Financial literacy is generally recognized as a primary factor of women empowerment, especially in the developing economies where economic differences between the genders are still acute. This paper discusses the connection between financial literacy and women empowerment in Chitwan, Nepal focusing on the multidimensional concept of financial literacy. The research design adopted a quantitative research design, and the primary data was gathered by conducting a structured questionnaire to 385 women aged 18-45 years. Financial literacy was assessed on five dimensions namely financial knowledge, financial skills, financial behavior, financial attitude, and financial awareness, with women empowerment as the dependent variable. The SPSS was used to compute descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and multiple regression with age and education being used as moderate variables. The results show that financial behavior, financial attitude, and financial awareness were positively and statistically significantly related to women empowerment, emphasizing the significance of the practice and the informed financial decision-making process. Financial knowledge and financial skills on the other hand positively but negatively correlate, indicating a lack of correlation between their theoretical and practical aspects. Besides, age and education have positive moderating effects between financial literacy and empowerment of women. The research not only provides the empirical evidence of circumstances in a semi-urban South Asian setting but also highlights the necessity of creating financial education programs, which should focus more on behavioral and attitudinal change as well as on knowledge improvement to enable women to become empowered in the long-term.