|
The microfinance community
needs to support continuing
innovation and diversification
of services to seriously address
gender inequality and discrimination
as well as poverty.
Networking
for innovation and diversity
of provision
There must be much greater
support and networking for
innovations
which can translate financial
service access into wider
changes in gender inequalities
and empowerment.
This will require the micro-finance
community to lobby donors for
funding for these innovations
and challenge the current preoccupation
with short-term (and short-sighted)
financial sustainability.
The aim of micro-finance regulation
and micro-finance advocacy
must be to create a diversified
microfinance sector which addresses
the needs of all women from
the very poorest women to experienced
businesswomen creating wealth
and employment. This will require
the micro-finance community
and donors to work together
to reverse the current concentration
of funding and effort into
a small pool of 'profitable
poor'. It will also require
much greater attention to paths
of upward graduation from micro-finance
to mainstream financial services.
The
'big picture': policy advocacy
for women's empowerment
Microfinance is a complementary
component of, not a substitute
for, a coherent agenda for
women's empowerment and gender
equality. Macro-economic and
social policies on the informal
sector, agriculture and international
trade limit the degree to which
poor women and men are able
to benefit from microfinance.
For women the constraints of
poverty are compounded by gender
discrimination and inequality
at all levels, including property
rights, family law and benefits,
rights in relation to sexual
violence, banking regulations
and practice, licensing legislation.
Promoting an enabling environment
for women's economic, social
and political activities
must therefore be mainstreamed
as part of the advocacy and
lobbying activities of microfinance
programmes.
As well as advocacy
and lobbying within the microfinance
community, there is a need
for the microfinance movement
to join with other organisations
to help their clients and
members to organize in changing:
• macro level economic
policies that discriminate
against the types of economic
activity in which women are
involved
• inefficient,
corrupt and costly provision
of basic needs and services
• formal legal
gender discrimination and women's
inability to enforce their
legal rights to property and
autonomy.
• undemocratic
political processes within
which women cannot make their
voices heard.
|
