CLOSING THE DIVIDE: ADDRESSING OBSTACLES FOR WOMEN IN ADOPTING DIGITAL FINANCE SOLUTIONS

The focal point of this research paper is to identify the challenges/obstacles to widespread adoption of digital financial services (DFS) among women. Despite DFS's significant potential to provide accessible, acceptable, and safe banking options to underprivileged sections through cutting-edge technology such as mobile-oriented solutions, digital platforms, its adoption poses considerable challenges. The key objective is to recognize these challenges. The author investigated 14 key challenges culled from the literature. Primary data was collected from the 400 women of Haryana using multistage purposive sampling. Haryana was chosen for the study because lower sex ratio was recorded 914 females 1000 according to family health survey 2019-2020. According to census 2011, female literacy ratio approximately 65.9% lower than the national average. When it comes to workforce participation, it was 19-20% which is below the national average according to periodic labour force survey (PLFS). In order to fulfil the objectives of the study, Exploratory factor analysis tool was used. Factor analysis extracted the 3 unique factors from 14 variables such as “User Understanding and experience”, “Technical and Infrastructure concerns”, “Data Safety and confidentiality issues”. The present research is one of the first few studies which is done through Primary survey data.