Gender and rural microfinance: Reaching and empowering ... - IFAD

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Women often require larger loans than they are typically offered in order to diversify out of ‘female’ activities or to expand their range of products for selling on local markets. Fronan, Côte d’Ivoire © IFAD, C. Nesbitt 4
Introduction IFAD’s overarching goal is to ensure that “Poor rural women and men are empowered to achieve higher incomes and improved food security”. Since its inception, support for rural finance systems has been a central strategy for achieving this goal, and IFAD has become one of the world’s largest lenders for poverty reduction. 1 Because of this poverty focus, the organization’s main emphasis is on rural microfinance – that is, financial services that are accessible to poor and low-income households and individuals in rural areas. Innovations in financial services, particularly in microfinance, have enabled millions of women and men in rural areas – formerly excluded from the financial sector – to gain access to these services on an ongoing basis. There are currently different organizational models, ranging from community-based, self-managed savings and credit, through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and specialist microfinance institutions (MFIs), to agricultural and commercial banks that are increasingly reaching out to rural areas. Financial services include not only credit, but savings, leasing, insurance and remittance transfers. Recently, rapid technological development has offered new opportunities for expansion and product development through mobile banking and more sophisticated information systems. Serious challenges remain: • Most microfinance is overwhelmingly concentrated in urban areas. Effective and sustainable models for delivery of financial services to poor rural people are still being developed. • There remain serious questions about the extent to which financially sustainable services can reach extremely poor people and the poorest rural areas. • Systems must ensure that increased access to financial services benefits clients and does not lead to overindebtedness or diversion of scarce resources from investment or consumption to interest repayments, savings and insurance premiums. • Financial services must be linked to the wider sustainable development process, so that increased access to finance also contributes to the development of markets, value chains and the strengthening of local and national economies. Both the opportunities and the challenges have gender dimensions that need to be taken into account in the current process of innovation and expansion. If rural microfinance aims to contribute to pro-poor development and economic growth, and particularly to IFAD's strategic goal of empowering poor rural women and men, gender mainstreaming 2 and women’s empowerment must be integral to rural finance interventions: 1 IFAD is the fourth largest funder (in committed amounts) of 54 donors and investors, according to CGAP (2008). 2 In the interests of brevity, ‘gender mainstreaming’ is used to refer to the mainstreaming of gender issues or equity. 5
Page 1 and 2: Gender and rural microfinance: Reac
Page 3 and 4: Contents Acronyms 3 Introduction 5
Page 5: Acronyms ACORD ANANDI BRAC CGAP DFI
Page 9 and 10: and issues, and, currently, a lack
Page 11 and 12: FIGURE 1 Microfinance and women’s
Page 13 and 14: Rather, these gender differences an
Page 15 and 16: that the empowerment process must h
Page 17 and 18: Organizational culture plays an imp
Page 19 and 20: BOX 1 Mainstreaming gender: Element
Page 21 and 22: It is possible for these changes in
Page 23 and 24: III. From access to empowerment: De
Page 25 and 26: BOX 4 Increasing women’s access t
Page 27 and 28: The following sections discuss gend
Page 29 and 30: The loan products available in rura
Page 31 and 32: BOX 6 Savings products Examples of
Page 33 and 34: BOX 7 Insurance programmes for wome
Page 35 and 36: large money transfer operators (Wes
Page 37 and 38: BOX 8 Financial literacy Self-Emplo
Page 39 and 40: discriminated against, or where the
Page 41 and 42: BOX 10 Mainstreaming empowerment in
Page 43 and 44: Programmes do not need to be women-
Page 45 and 46: BOX 12 Savings-and-credit groups: A
Page 47 and 48: has abandoned its original model, t
Page 49 and 50: In India, many organizations are in
Page 51 and 52: Land titling, India The Orissa Trib
Page 53 and 54: Women are often keen to develop the
Page 55 and 56: BOX 16 Measures to promote an enabl
Page 57 and 58:
Quality of service • Products wil
Page 59 and 60:
Annexes: Decision checklists for ge
Page 61 and 62:
Practice Recruitment and promotion
Page 63 and 64:
General Questions • Are products
Page 65 and 66:
Large versus small loans • Women
Page 67 and 68:
Returns to capital • Access quest
Page 69 and 70:
C. Programme design: Rural microfin
Page 71 and 72:
D. Gender impact checklist Gender i
Page 73 and 74:
• Even if women do not use the in
Page 75 and 76:
Groverman, V., and J.D. Gurung (200
Page 77 and 78:
Rose, K. (1992) Where women are lea
Page 79:
International Fund for Agricultural
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Gender and rural microfinance: Reaching and empowering ... - IFAD

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