Microloans for Women: A Source of Empowerment and Social Change
Patricia Palle is a single mother with a successful business making alpaca sweaters. | 
She started with only her talent and a sewing machine, and caring for her family was an enormous challenge. Today, she owns her own store.
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Poverty is, in itself, oppressive. Poverty can strip a person of their freedoms, limit their protections, and pose consequences to their physical health. And yet for countless impoverished women these hardships are amplified by the oppression they face as a result of their gender. In much of the developing world, deeply engrained, patriarchal beliefs about a women’s worth have systematically blocked what limited opportunities are available from reaching women who are no less capable – and in some instances more capable – than their husbands and brothers. To effectively fight poverty, it is critical that we understand the cyclical relationship between lifting women out of poverty and women serving as powerful agents of social change. WOMEN’S WORK, AND WHAT THEY HAVE TO WORK WITH In subsistence economies, water does not flow from a tap, daycare services are largely nonexistent, and feeding the family is a constant struggle. Much of the world still sees domestic work as “women’s work,” which can include collecting water, caring for the children, or harvesting a field. These many hours of hard labor are unpaid, and if a woman should seek income it will likely be through informal employment with small returns. As a result, the majority of the world’s poor are women, and they have fewer opportunities to become economically self-sufficient. For struggling parents, educating a child is a significant investment, and the traditional roles that men and women play imply that sons are most investment-worthy. Worldwide, there are 115 girls to every 100 boys out of school, and of the girls who are in school, 20% will not complete primary level education. As a result, women worldwide are less educated than men to the extent that they make up two-thirds of the world’s illiterate people. For the girls left behind, they are likely to marry young, have more children and generate little income. VULNERABLE WOMEN AND HUMAN RIGHTS Less educated and less profitable, women in the developing world are often seen as subservient to their male counterparts. Without leverage or legal protections, disempowered women are often very vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. According to the United Nations Population Fund, “Around the world, as many as one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or abused in some other way – most often by someone she knows, including by her husband or another male family member.” In India, a “bride burning” is committed once every two hours – an illegal but nonetheless widespread act of murdering the wife in a staged kitchen fire in order to marry another for a better dowry. In the face of labor-market exclusion, disempowerment and abuse, many women leave their homes with the naïve hopes of finding employment abroad only to be captured by human traffickers and traded like a commodity. Eighty percent of the victims of human trafficking are women sold into sexual slavery. Rescuing these victims is extremely difficult as it requires the cooperation of governments around the world, many of which do not have the resources or motivation to work on this issue. Slowing the tide of human trafficking must start at the root of the problem by providing better education to migrants about the risks of exploitation, and more importantly, by ensuring that all people – especially women – have opportunity at home to build a sustainable livelihood. These facts are horrific, but for women and girls across the globe, they are a grim reality. And yet, there are solutions that bring hope to the issue of women’s social and economic empowerment, and they are being implemented everyday, saving and improving the lives of women across the globe. INVESTING IN WOMEN, AND THE FUTURE Microloans for women are a forceful 1-2 punch against disempowerment and poverty. International development initiatives that give marginalized women the chance to earn income enjoy the double benefits of both raising the social status of women while having a greater impact on indicators of poverty such as family health, education and overall economic growth. Researchers have found that women are more likely to put earned income to good use than their husbands, because they have the best perspective on the needs of the family . When women are economically empowered, children are more likely to be educated and healthy, and more money is likely to be reinvested into the family enterprise. Furthermore, women with more decision-making power and financial resources are better able to plan their pregnancies, and ultimately, bear fewer children. The fewer children a woman bears, the more resources are available for each family member, and the better quality of life the family will have. This also has environmental implications, as human overpopulation threatens the delicate ecological balance of the earth. And so, it has been seen that empowering women to take control of their reproduction has a powerful impact on economic development and environmental sustainability. The benefits of providing microloans for women are obvious, and many. ACCION International and its partners provide microfinance services to both genders, but with a heavier focus on women in areas such as India where gender equality lags. Through the development of a thriving commercial microfinance industry, ACCION seeks to bring economic empowerment to millions of microentrepreneurs who need it. Eventually, impoverished women will find it possible – and even commonplace – to take their livelihoods into their own hands.
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