Reaching and empowering women - Genfinance

BOX 14
Supporting women’s property rights in microfinance programmes
Local negotiation by women, Bangladesh
The Agricultural Development and Intensification Project (ADIP), which closed in 2004, worked
with local NGOs in organizing savings-and-credit groups. The groups focused mainly on
improving the prospects for income generation among landless and near-landless people,
marginal and small-scale farmers; households headed by women; and destitute women. A large
number of women used loans to buy assets, particularly land (45 per cent). Many women
negotiated access to land with their husbands by contending that since they had borrowed the
money, they had the right to register the land in their own names.
Local negotiation with leaders, Ghana
The Land Conservation and Smallholder Rehabilitation Project (LACOSREP) was a povertytargeted,
group lending project sponsored by IFAD. LACOSREP tried to empower women by
improving their access to irrigated land and credit. Because traditional patterns of land use and
ownership limited women’s access to irrigated land, the project posed a threat to the traditional
power structure. After project staff negotiated with the tindanas (landowners), traditional chiefs,
husbands and men leaders, women’s access to irrigated land changed notably, even though
their plots were still about one fourth the size of men’s.
Better access to capital has also improved market access and income generation. “Women
were not traditionally land owners in this region, but the [water users’ association] system has
given them direct access to irrigated land. As a consequence, women play a much greater role
in the management of irrigation, and this [change] is highly visible at meetings where they speak
up to represent their own views. The [functional literacy groups] have also provided an arena for
women to co-operate and organise collective income-generation. Husbands are said to be
increasingly listening to their wives’ views on issues concerning the household and even passing
on their financial responsibilities unto their wives, as they consider them to be financially sound.
Access to greater capital and means of transport, such as bicycles, has undoubtedly
accelerated women’s entry into the market. The livestock component, by increasing access to
investments in goats, chickens and guinea-fowl, has played a similar role” (IFAD 2006b).
Direct provision of property, Nepal
The Leasehold Forestry and Livestock Programme promoted savings-and-credit groups and
cooperatives among very poor people, landless people, disadvantaged and marginalized groups,
and households headed by women. The project leased blocks of degraded forest land for 40 years
to groups of landless households, which were granted exclusive user rights on the basis of carrying
out an agreed management plan. Women promoters organized women’s groups to obtain this land.
Promoting an enabling environment
for gender-equitable rural microfinance:
Consumer protection and gender
advocacy
There are a range of potential measures that
organizations such as IFAD can take at the
meso and macro levels to promote an enabling
environment for rural microfinance that also
makes a significant contribution to gender
equality and women’s empowerment. A
particularly important role is the collation of
information and exchange of experience on
gender innovations (of the type discussed
above and in box 16). Many of the more costly
non-financial services, for example financial
literacy, might be better offered through a
network of providers, and there is a need to
collect comparative information on gender
access and impact from various types of
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