Brooks, R.

Kaaria, Susan K.

Korir, L.

Maina, I.

Muindi, P.

Mukewa, E.

Mutua, E.

Waithanji, Elizabeth M.

Mutua, Edna N.

Korir, Luke

CGSpace (CGIAR)

ILRI Research Brief — December 2014 1Microcredit and the empowerment of women Elizabeth Waithanji, Susan Kaaria, Edna Mutua, Luke Korir, Rachel Brooks, Elizabeth Mukewa,  Pauline Muindi and Immaculate MainaIO.LRI RESEARCH BRIEF  NDate  year         ILRI RESEARCH BRIEF  37         6                  December  2014        14    Context To improve benefits from livestock, which include produc-tion for household consumption and surplus for sale in the market, it is necessary for livestock keepers to adopt new production and productivity improvement practices and technologies. But achieving this may require access to credit that might not be readily available, particularly for women.Many women face barriers in accessing credit as individuals because they lack collateral and often use group social capital as collateral. When microfinance institutions deliver their financial services to clients through group-based lending programs, groups are used as a platform to guarantee the loan, to train, mentor, mobilize savings and insurance, collect loan repayments from members and share the burden of learning what works or does not work for members. By lending to women, microfinance organizations enable them to broaden their participation in community social networks and programs, increasing their opportunities and empowerment.Positive and negative impacts of microcredit Whilst in theory, microfinance services combined with interventions to empower women lead to positive benefits, including enhanced household economic status, improved status and decision-making power of the borrower within the household and the community, and reduced economic and social subordination for some women, this is not always the case. In reality, there are cases where married women, in particular, exercise little or no control over their loan; such women have less control than men over the enterprise for which the money was borrowed, and ‘joint management’ often hides men’s dominance in decision-making.Methodology An adapted Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) was used to compare the empowerment of benefi-ciaries and non-beneficiaries of an agricultural microcredit project.Measuring women’s empowerment To capture the complexity and multi-dimensional nature of empowerment, indicators for measuring women’s empow-erment have evolved from use of single proxy indicators, such as income and women’s education, to composite and multi-dimensional indicators. Common composite indica-tors include the Women’s Empowerment Index (WEI), Gender Development Index (GDI), the Cumulative Em-powerment Index (CEI) and the WEAI.WEAI is a composite empowerment index that uses two sub-indices - the five domains of empowerment (5DE) and the Gender Parity Index (GPI). The 5DE include: (1) decisions about agricultural production, (2) access to and decision-making power over productive resources, (3) control over use of income, (4) leadership in the ILRI Research Brief — December 20142community, and (5) time use, and are made up of ten indicators. GPI measures the proportion of women who are as empowered as men within their households. WEAI is calculated as a weighted average (relative importance) of 5DE and GPI.Using an adapted WEAI, this study compared, in terms of empowerment, women who had obtained credit, with those that had not obtained credit. The WEAI was adapted to include a sixth domain, ‘health’, with two indicators on women’s vulnerability - women’s perceptions of gender-based violence and women’s decision-making on their reproductive health. A third indicator on custody of identity card was added to the leadership domain. The adapted WEAI thererfore has 13 indicators. A woman is considered empowered if she has adequate achievements in four of the six domains, or is empowered in some combination of the weighted indicators that reflects 67% total adequacy.Data was collected from 111 households in Trans Nzoia County, Rift Valley province, Kenya in June 2012. The adapted WEAI of women who had obtained credit and those who had not was computed and compared.Microfinance is the provision of small amounts of afford-able credit (or other financial services and products) that enable the poor to increase their incomes and improve their living standards. Financial outcomes, as a result of access to microfinance, include savings and accumula-tion of assets. Non financial outcomes include improved health, food security, nutrition, education, women’s em-powerment, housing, job creation, and social cohesion.Juhudi Kilimo Through targeted loans, Juhudi Kilimo helps marginal-ized farmers in rural Kenya with little access to financial services to build sustainable businesses. The average loan of about Ksh 40,000 (US$454) is used to buy designated agricultural assets (e.g. livestock and agri-inputs). Repay-ments are usually made over 12-18 months. Juhudi provides training on its requirements and services, and on financial management. Clients repay the loan using income gener-ated by the assets, which also act as collateral.Farmers that have benefited from loans made by Juhudi have been seen to substantially strengthen their livelihoods, making improvements in housing, educating children and adding employees and assets to their farming enterprise.Results The average size of land operated ranged between 0.10 and 3.73 acres, with male headed households servicing a loan owning the largest acreages and female headed households not servicing a loan owning the smallest.Empowerment A larger proportion of women with loans (43%) than those without (36%) was empowered according to the adequacy head count. In terms of the six dimensions of empower-ment (6DE) and the WEAI, women who took loans were more empowered than those who did not. Women without loans had higher gender parity with their husbands than those with loans. Removing female heads of households (n=16) from the samples used to compute the WEAI (n=109), resulted in a decrease in the WEAI (from 0.74 to 0.70), which might suggest that loans empowered women from female headed households and not those from male headed households (Table 1).Table 1: Empowerment scores of women with and without creditMeasure/score Loan statusTaken loans Not taken loans% women empowered 43 366DE 0.726 0.697GPI 0.86 0.87WEAI (all women) 0.74 0.71WEAI (with FHH removed from sample)0.70 0.71To investigate this matter further, the contribution of each indicator to the inadequacy of women and men from households with and without loans was investigated (Table 2).Contribution of indicators to disempowerment Looking at indicators at the aggregate level, women who had loans were more empowered than women who had not taken loans, but were less empowered in four indica-tors: input in production decisions, group membership, satisfaction with time allocated for leisure, and satisfac-tion with their work distribution. Women who had not taken loans were less empowered than women who had taken loans in two indicators: autonomy in production and control over use of income. Overall, men were more em-powered than women in nine of the 13 indicators (Table 2) irrespective of whether they had taken loans or not.Table 2: Factors contributing to disempowerment (inadequacy) of women and menDomain IndicatorTaken loan Not taken loanMen Women Men WomenProduction Input in production decision– + – –Autonomy in production++ ++ ++ +++Resources Ownership of assets + +++ + +++Purchase or sale of assets+ +++ + +++Access to and decision on credit+ +++ + +++Income Control over use of income– + – +++Leadership Group membership – +++ +++ ++Speaking in public – ++ – ++Identity card – +++ – +++Time Leisure – +++ – ++Work distribution – +++ – –Health Reproductive health + +++ – +++GBV attitude + +++ + +++Key:   – = Adequate or barely inadequate; + = Slightly inadequate; ++ = Moderately inadequate; +++ = Substantially inadequate The women’s inadequacy in input in productive decisions may have been caused by the fact that most women do not own productive assets and their decisions are contingent upon their relationships with men who own them. Even with access to loans, women might have been constrained from exploiting the loans because of having weak decision-ILRI Research Brief — December 2014 3making capacity over the assets required to obtain the loans. The other indicators are associated with women’s constraints in terms of time once they acquire the asset e.g. a dairy cow. Women assign most of their time attending to it, in order to attain maximum productivity so that the asset is able to pay for itself quickly. The fact that women with loans were more empowered than those without, in terms of autonomy in production and control over use of income, suggests that women taking loans gain in terms of these two indicators.Conclusions In terms of proportions of adequacy, (indicators 6DE and WEAI), women who had access to credit were more em-powered than those that had no access. Further investiga-tion, in terms of removing female heads of households from the sample and re-computing WEAI, however, suggested that women from male headed households that had access to credit did not become empowered. Their inability to become empowered by the credit intervention might be explained by the fact that they had limited input to pro-ductive decisions and were constrained in terms of time. This finding supports the need to measure empowerment using composite indices because they are able to demon-strate specific dimensions and components of dimensions (demonstrated by different indicators) that contribute to empowerment. The fact that men culturally own and con-trol more assets (land and other resources) than women places men at greater advantage than women before the intervention. Differences in empowerment between male and female beneficiaries of the microcredit intervention could have been influenced by these underlying gender dif-ferences. In spite of having access to loans, therefore, most women might have still depended on men to provide the land and other resources required for production, as well as for decision-making.Recommendations•	 Access to microcredit by women should be pursued, as women who access credit are more empowered, in spite of men owning and controlling most productive resources. Credit interventions should, nonetheless, be provided simultaneously with interventions to prevent or mitigate against the reduction of decision-making and control over productive assets by women.•	 Based on findings from this study, there appears to be a need to transform community gender ideologies that require men to control most productive assets, which might be associated with undermining the empowerment of women in male headed households. One way of attaining this transformation may be by involving both economic and rights development practitioners in planning and implementation of microcredit projects. The rights practitioners could help to influence ideologies by demonstrating the ones that violate women’s rights, in what ways, and how this can be stopped.References Alkire, S., Meizen-Dick, R., Peterman, A., Quisumbing, A., Seymour, G. and Vaz, A. (2013). The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index. World Development 52, 71-91.Kabeer, N. (2001). Conflicts Over Credit: Re-Evaluating the Empowerment Potential of Loans to Women in Rural Bangladesh, World Development 29 (1), 63-84.Hermes, N. and Lensink, R. (2011). Microfinance: Its Impact, Outreach, and Sustainability. World Development, 39 (6), 875-881.Farmers who have benefitted from loans have strengthened their livelihoodsILRI Research Brief — December 20144The research brief has a Creative Commons licence. You are free to re-use or distribute this work, provided credit is given to ILRI.            December 2014ilri.org Better lives through livestock ILRI is a member of the CGIAR ConsortiumBox 30709, Nairobi 00100, Kenya Phone: +254 20 422 3000 Fax:     +254 20 422 3001 Email: ILRI-Kenya@cgiar.orgBox 5689,  Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Phone: +251 11 617 2000  Fax: +251 11 617 2001 Email: ILRI-Ethiopia@cgiar.orgContact Elizabeth Waithanji e.waithanji@cgiar.orgPhoto credits:  Page 1: ILRI/Charlie Pye-Smith Page 1: ILRI/Zerihun Sewunet Page 2: ILRI/Ricardo Gangale Page 4: ILRI/Fulani MediaThis brief is an excerpt from the study “Evaluating the impacts of microcredit and value chain programs for livestock on women’s empowerment”, led by the Interna-tional Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and conducted with Juhudi Kilimo with funding from the Ford Founda-tion (www.fordfoundation.org). This is one of a series of five briefs on livestock and gender, designed and pro-duced by WRENmedia (www.wrenmedia.co.uk).Loans are used to buy agri-inputs and livestock

Microcredit and the empowerment of women

https://cgspace.cgiar.org/bitstream/10568/52226/1/ResearchBrief_37.pdf

Microcredit and the empowerment of women

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

CGSpace (CGIAR)