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> Posted by Center Staff
Yesterday, in a piece on Huffington Post, Mary Ellen Iskenderian of Women’s World Banking and Joe Saunders of Visa Inc. announced a new partnership between Visa, Women’s World Banking, Diamond Bank and Enhancing Financial Innovation & Access. The partnership will focus on advancing financial inclusion for women in Nigeria and transforming the lives of women in emerging markets.
The post begins:
A growing chorus of voices is calling for a shift away from cash-based economies in the developing world. For governments, non-governmental organizations and companies focused on expanding financial access to the underserved, it is fast becoming a top priority. Not only is it too costly and unsustainable to reach people who rely solely on cash-based financial services, but relying solely on cash severely limits economic and social growth. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Danielle Donza
As the European Union presses ahead with plans to impose quotas that would increase the proportion of women on company boards, I am reminded of a recent conference call where a participant expressed frustration with a similar investor-imposed quota that required at least two women to serve on the board of a microfinance institution. Citing a lack of qualified board members in the microfinance industry, let alone qualified female board members, he said, “I can go out and ask two of my female friends to sit on the Board but they aren’t going to contribute anything.”
This “checking the box” perspective is not only unjust; it also represents a bad business decision. Studies reveal that “firms with equal representation of women on their boards had 56 percent higher operating profit compared with companies with all-male boards.”
Women comprise 51 percent of the population, control approximately 80 percent of household spending, and yet only make up 15.7 percent of Fortune 500 boards of directors and less than 14 percent of board members for Europe’s biggest companies. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Rosita Najmi, Financial Inclusion Practice, World Bank
“Congratulations,” the young man said, as I entered a favela in Rio. Puzzled, I raised my eyebrows and shrugged my shoulders. “He was congratulating you because you’re a woman.” said the young woman accompanying me on a UNDP assignment. My eyebrows migrated even further north. With a smile, she clarified, “Today is International Day of the Woman.” As we walked on, I turned and yelled over my shoulder with a wave, “Obrigada.”
While I’m passionate about a lot of things, since 2001, I’ve been thinking more about the concept of universal, financial citizenship and the role of women in poverty reduction. I’m sure my colleagues at the World Bank would each have a diversity of views on this topic. However, I think we would all agree upon certain core ingredients, such as (i) access to a suite of quality products and services (including savings, credit, insurance, remittances, payments and beyond), (ii) regulations that ensure consumer protection and transparency, and (iii) individual financial identities and histories that benefit from financial education and security. While this might easily resonate with someone who believes in the larger concept of democratizing development, at this point, you might be asking what “universal” means. That’s where the women (and other vulnerable populations like persons with disabilities, rural populations, and indigenous people) come in. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Danielle Donza
I recently attended a presentation in Boston where Dana Dakin, the founder and president of Womens Trust, a microfinance program serving women in Ghana, was asked about the impact of her program. Dakin replied that “wife beating is down,” repeating the words of the response of Victoria, a leader in the community of Pokuase, a Ghanaian town of approximately 20,000 people. The Executive Director of Womens Trust Ghana, Wilma Longdon, hypothesized that this result is due not only to that fact that their microloans are empowering women in Pokuase, but also to the way that these microloans take the pressure off men to be the sole providers for their families. Dakin admitted it is almost impossible to prove causality between the program and this outcome.
Womens Trust is a unique microfinance institution that channels all of its profits from microlending into innovative education and healthcare programming for women and their families. Its three-pronged approach to development and empowerment provides microlending, education, and healthcare services to women and girls in Pokuase. They hope this approach will be sustainable, scalable, and replicated, and so do I!
Flash forward a day and I’m meeting with another incredible woman. Jennifer John works with Criterion Ventures on its Women Effects Investments (WEI) initiative, which looks to build an ecosystem around investing in women and girls. John and her colleagues are identifying and creating new female-friendly investment opportunities and mobilizing more female investors to place their assets in vehicles that expand the seat at the table for women in social investing. WEI is looking to shape the social capital markets with a “Gender Lens” which looks at women’s access to capital, workplace equity, and how well financial products and services are tailored to the needs of women. The Gender Lens is meant to maximize the impact of investments on women and girls because WEI believes that when women are economic agents and leaders, social change accelerates and returns multiply. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Center Staff
Ela R. Bhatt, founder of the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in Gujarat, was recently appointed to the board of directors of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
Bhatt, who is sometimes called the “mother of Indian microfinance,” helped start the Mahila Sewa Co-operative Bank in 1974, two years before Muhammad Yunus initiated the project that would later become Grameen Bank.
Bhatt was interviewed by the New York Times blog India Ink. Among the major points she made to interviewer Vikas Bajaj:
- “The future of microfinance sector, as such, is not dark. One, because of women – amongst the poor, women are a big part of it. They have proved themselves everywhere.”
- “The poor need a full package of financial services, savings, credit, insurance — I also add housing — social security, financial literacy, pensions and counseling. If the purpose is poverty reduction, that whole package of financial services is needed.” Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Michelle Romeu
This week’s blogosphere features question marks over India’s legislative landscape, tourists and their relationship to microfinance, and new ideas for boosting women’s economic power.
- In his blog, David Roodman analyzes India’s new draft microfinance bill, highlighting key points and pondering its potential consequences.
- Alleviating poverty through tourism? Kiva’s blog explores the links between microfinance and sustainable tourism in countries such as Mexico and Peru.
- The Financial Access Initiative blog features an interview with Dean Karlan, who recently co-authored More Than Good Intentions: How a New Economics is Helping to Solve Global Poverty along with Jacob Appel. (Also check out Guy Stuart’s book review on this blog.) Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Center Staff
Nancy Barry pioneered lending to small enterprise at the World Bank in the late 1970s, and she later wrote its policy on this type of lending. She also designed projects in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and led expansion of the World Bank’s small business portfolio from zero to $3.3 billion in only a decade.
While at the World Bank she joined the board of Women’s World Banking (WWB), a network of women-led microfinance institutions, serving as its president and CEO for 16 years. Most recently, she founded Enterprise Solutions to Poverty, which works with about 130 leaders of emerging market corporations and multi-national corporations that are engaging large numbers of poor people as suppliers, distributors, and consumers of products and services that build assets.
Barry shares her thoughts on the microfinance industry past, present, and future in the fifth installment of the “Microfinance Matters” interview series:
Nancy Barry
Change Agent
In her early days as a young professional at the World Bank, Nancy Barry traveled to Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India. She observed micro-venders everywhere — selling farm produce in villages or whatever they could in the streets of cities. “I became obsessed with finding ways to build out to the bottom 50 percent of the economy,” she recalls.
Armed with an MBA from Harvard University, she pioneered lending to small enterprise at the World Bank in the late 1970s, before microfinance was known among development professionals. Barry went on to write the World Bank’s policy on small enterprise lending, design projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America and lead expansion of the Bank’s small business portfolio from zero to $3.3 billion in 10 years.
While at the World Bank she joined the board of Women’s World Banking (WWB), a network of women-led microfinance institutions…
To read more of the interview with Barry, click here.
> Posted by Center Staff
For centuries, sages, poets, and scientists have punched the clock and collected paychecks for puzzling over “what women want.” Forbes journalist Lisa Quast is now posting her answer to that question, at least in terms of microfinance.
Quast interviews Women’s World Banking President and CEO Mary Ellen Iskenderian in a three-part series. In the second post, “What Women Want from Microfinance,” Iskenderian zeroes in on savings as a must-have product. Iskenderian also identifies financial education as a key to making savings accessible to women.
There’s a lot more to it, of course. Quast’s three-part series – well worth a read – starts here.
Image credit: Tango Desktop Project
> Posted by Michelle Romeu
This week our blog-hopping takes us from the water pump to the cell phone, as well as points in-between.
- Mary Ellen Iskenderian, president and CEO of Women’s World Banking, guest posts at the Harvard Business Review blog to point out the many circumstances in which women are not only microfinance clients, but also microfinance leaders.
- The UN’s World Water Day was last week, and Chelsea Dubois of the (oft-microfinance-oriented) Innovations for Poverty Action blog took the opportunity to show us a striking photo (and the story behind it) that shows us the dire need for clean water in areas such as rural Ghana. (And in connection with MF and H2O, don’t forget Matt Damon.) Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Mary Dakim, Intern, Financial Inclusion for Persons with Disabilities Program
Mary Dakim
Portfolios of the Excluded: Anyone who has lived or worked in the field recognizes the difference in international development research that is enriched by voices and realities of the field versus what is produced in developed countries based on books, internet searches, and a general literature review. For that reason, I was delighted to hear of The Center for Financial Inclusion’s goal of finding case studies from across the world of non-subsidized financial services for persons with disabilities (PWDs). I think their approach will yield a more authentic perspective on the magnitude of exclusion for this population. Whether the investigation yields root causes on the demand or supply side, it will allow for a deeper understanding of the opportunities and obstacles persons with disabilities as well as financial service providers face in reaching inclusion for this population. If you have case studies, please let us know via a comment below or email us.
In hopes of providing one of those “voices from the field,” I offer you my own story. My personal experience living in Nigeria for 28 years as a woman with a disability and facing poverty is unlike the millions of other similar women with disabilities whose stories will remain unwritten and unknown. I was lucky to have been accompanied on my personal path to financial citizenship. Read the rest of this entry »
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