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| Volume 1, Issue 4: September '03 | ||||
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In This Issue Plenary Session: Empowering Women Through Microfinance/ Innovations from the Field Plenary Session: Presentation of BRAC Institutional Action Plan State of the Microcredit Summit Campaign Report 2003 to be released November 3 in New York USAID and SEEP Network to Facilitate Development of Poverty Assessment Tools Archived Issues
Vol 1 Iss 4 Sept. '03 |
Plenary Session: Empowering Women Through Microfinance/Innovations from the FieldRemarks by Joanne Sandler on Empowering Women Through Microfinance
….There are two questions that are particularly pertinent as we gather here today. In 2000, world leaders agreed to the Millennium Development Goals which prioritized amongst others, halving world poverty by 2015 and achieving gender equality. How will microcredit programs contribute to achieving these intersecting goals? Another question we would pose is that over 170 countries have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). How will microcredit programs reinforce government responsibility to make CEDAW a reality in the lives of women, and particularly poor women? Twenty-nine MFIs alone are responsible for more than half of our outreach to the poorest today. Around the globe the reality is that most microfinance institutions are small. Seven of ten are reaching less than 2,500 poorest clients. Nine of ten are reaching less than 10,000 poorest clients. As Elizabeth Littlefield of CGAP said this morning, MFIs aren't growing very fast. We need to change this. Small and medium-sized MFIs who are serious must gain access to capital in order to grow, and to grow fast.
Our deepest appreciation goes to the authors of "Empowering Women Through Microfinance" for raising these questions and offering insights into future areas of exploration. By placing the principles of gender equality, human rights and women's empowerment at the core of their paper, their observations offer an important counterbalance to a field that might sacrifice the higher goals in favor of meeting the bottom line. They demonstrate that without a clear strategy, empowerment is not an inevitable outcome of microcredit. But with a clear strategy, microcredit programs can challenge inequality, promote democracy, enhance self-esteem and contribute to more sustainable livelihood choices. What we hope emerges, for those who have read this paper, is greater understanding that the potential of microfinance to support achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and women's empowerment is significant but still relatively untapped. Microcredit has the potential to reach millions of poor women. The paper brings out both what we know and what we do not know, but need to know. First, what we know. In engendering development, the World Bank has clearly pointed out that societies that discriminate on the basis of gender pay the cost with greater poverty, slower economic growth, weaker governments and lower living standards. Jeffrey Sachs in his paper, "Addressing Absolute Poverty" tells us that in addition to a prolonged failure to achieve economic growth, the second major cause of poverty at the country level is social exclusion and discrimination including gender discrimination. At the same time we have seen successful microcredit programs combine good portfolio performance with organizing women in the informal sector for better wages, educating women about inheritance and property rights or building literacy. …As Susy and Lisa noted, we can do better. While we do not expect microfinance institutions alone to solve all of the world's problems, we would like to see microfinance institutions as strong allies in efforts to achieve a world free from poverty, violence and inequality. Read remarks by Barrister Shahida Jamil |