Setting the scene:
Zohra, is a 46-years-old mother of three sons and three
daughters. She is living in one of the poorly developed areas of Rawalpindi,
Pakistan. Her husband has been running a general store since 2009 and wants to
expand it by purchasing more goods, but because of financial constraints, he
finds this difficult. For this purpose, Zohra has requested a loan from Kiva’s
partner BRAC Pakistan, for the growth of her husband's general store. He would
purchase items such as bread, eggs, detergent, tea, coffee, washing powder etc
for his general store .This will help in increasing their monthly savings and
improving their children's future as well. She is hopeful that the loan will
result in a positive and productive outcome for them so that they can lead a
happy life. (from KIVA org)
From the case study it appears that Zohra might not be
engaged directly in income generating activities. Zohra might just be the channel for credit
which might still enable her to play a more active role in entire household
decision-making, decrease her and the family’s vulnerability and increase
investment in family well-fare. This
situation may benefit Zohra’s children through increasing expenditure on their
nutrition and education. It can also
lead to improved well-being for Zohra and enable her to bring about changes in gender
inequalities in the household. It is
also likely to benefit Zohra’s husband as a result of increased household
income. (Mayoux and Hartl,2009)
According to Mayoux and Hartl’s (2009) ‘Virtuous Spiral’,
increasing women’s access to microfinance services can lead to their economic
empowerment, increased household well-being and social and political
empowerment. In addition these three
aspects of empowerment mutually reinforce the ‘virtuous spirals’ and thus
contributing towards women empowerment both in household and macro level.
In contrast to that, let us put Zohra in a different context
where she was forced to borrow the money for her husband’s business. She is not allowed to make any decision on
household expenditure and got no control over the loan and how it is being
spent. Every time she tries to talk
about the loan, she becomes the victim of domestic violence and physically
abused. Zohra decides to borrow more
money from another microcredit program to repay her husband’s loan. Zohra ends
up joining more than two microcredit programs and gets in serious debt.
There is no denying the fact that, women are vulnerable in
the hands of social norms in some societies. Jamal (2008) states the surprising
and unexpected impact of microfinance regarding women empowerment, women are
often abused by their husbands when they participate in microfinance because
the man begins to feel marginalized as the women gain some financial
responsibility of the family. The study
conducted by Asim (2008) on the urban slums of the Lahore district suggests
that microcredit intervention has no effect on the bargaining power of women
within the household for a broad range of decisions including child related,
health, economic and social mobility decisions.
Although the government of Pakistan and various rural
support programs believe that by providing credit to women to generate income
and consumption, the social and economic status of women can be improved (Jamal
2008), microfinance will only be successful in empowering women if there are
sufficient norms and practices in place that provide for empowerment in a
broader socio-economic and political context. (Hudak 2010)
References
Hudok, C. (2010), ‘Political Institutions & Grass root
Development: The Political Economy of Microfinance’
Jamal, H. (2008), ‘Exploring the Impact of Microfinance in
Pakistan’ available at http://www.spdc-pak.com/publications/Research%20Reports/RR-77.pdf.
Accessed on 6/5/2013
Asim, S. (2008), ‘Evaluating the Impact of Microcredit on
Women’s Empowerment in Pakistan’ available at http://www.academia.edu/165769/Evaluating_the_Impact_of_Microcredit_on_Womens_Empowerment_in_Pakistan
accessed on 6/5/2013
Mayoux, L. and Hartl, M. (2009), ‘Gender and Rural
Microfinance: Reaching and Empowering Women’ available at http://www.ifad.org/gender/pub/gender_finance.pdf
accessed on 6/5/2013
