Beyond Financial Access: The Association between Financial Inclusion and Women’s Economic Empowerment in Montserrado County, Liberia

Women in Montserrado are constrained by structural factors that weaken the effectiveness of CBO training on income, asset control, and household decision-making, and ineffective interventions are seldom discovered in existing evaluations. This research investigated the association between financial inclusion interventions conducted by CBOs and women’s economic empowerment, specifically on microfinance access, entrepreneurship training, financial services, and savings accounts. Using the Capability Approach and Empowerment Theory, it used a convergent parallel design in a mixed-methods approach. The population of interest consisted of 42,990 women beneficiaries, and the sample size of 384 was calculated using Kothari’s formula and allocated proportionally to five districts, of which 310 responded to the survey. The study relied on descriptive statistics, cross-tabulation, correlation, and regression analysis for quantitative data. Findings from interviews and focus group discussions were analyzed thematically. Results show that women with greater microfinance access (26.9% vs 12.1%), entrepreneurship training (23.5% vs 14.4%), use of financial products (28.3% vs 10.2%), and savings (24.1% vs 11.7%) were associated with slightly higher economic empowerment and food security. The strength of correlations was weak to moderate (r = 0.02 - 0.55), regression analysis showed a small statistical association (financial products B = 0.055, p = 0.006; entrepreneurship training B = 0.110, p = 0.015) and qualitative findings indicate the presence of household, cultural, and project factors that impede decision-making power. The findings indicate that CBO-led financial inclusion is associated with higher women’s income and food security but not with decision-making powers.