> Posted by Josh Goldstein aka Mr. Provocative
The elephant in the room of vulnerable minorities that continue to be excluded in large numbers from microfinance services is the globe’s second largest population after women: men. The vulnerability of men is often overlooked, due to their historic domination of women and their control of wealth in most societies throughout recorded history. Of course for every wealthy landowner or merchant, there were many slaves, landless laborers, and indentured servants, who controlled none of the world’s wealth and were lucky if they scratched out a living.
When microcredit first gained traction and credibility as a poverty alleviation strategy in the seventies, creating self-employment opportunities for women in the informal sector was central to its mission. Organizations like Women’s World Banking (birthed at the UN’s World Conference on Women in 1975) and Pro Mujer (1990) embodied this outreach strategy. There were very sound reasons to focus on women, who are and remain the poorest of the poor. And this emphasis reflected the zeitgeist of the time, as many of the early leaders of microfinance came of age in the women’s movement. Theirs was a struggle for equal rights and equal pay in societies that were patriarchal and discriminatory. It was a logical next step to bring this message of women’s rights to international development work.
The focus on women was validated and reinforced by success in microfinance’s formative years. Through that experience, conventional wisdom developed that women were more reliable payers, worked better in groups, and were more likely to use loan proceeds to benefit their families. Men, by contrast, were seen as selfish and uncooperative, more likely to squander their loans on drink and other vices.
Today, women remain the clients of choice for MFIs. According to a 2011 MIX survey, “Gender-oriented goals are generally prominent among MFIs: women represent a relatively high proportion – usually the majority – of clients across regions and half of MFIs offer non-financial services specifically designed to target the needs of women.”
In the 21st century, targeting the employment needs of poor women is as valid as it ever was—but what is not acceptable in the 21st century is not to target the needs of men as well. Men are hurting. In the Middle East, unemployed men are a serious threat not just to the region’s stability and prosperity, but to family life as well: “We have, throughout the Arab world, a young, unemployed, alienated and radicalized group of people, mainly men, who have found a vehicle to express themselves,” says Rob Malley, the Middle East-North African program director for the International Crisis Group.
For the first time in U.S. history, women today outnumber men in the work force. There are more young African American men in prison than in college. Women are 60 percent more likely than men to earn a bachelor’s degree by the time they are 23, according to data recently released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In North Korea, far more women are breadwinners than men, due to the collapse of formal employment opportunities for men. The women have stalls in markets (the informal sector) and refer to their husbands as “puppies,” (a terrible insult) since they are utterly dependent on their wives for survival.
Work prospects like these produce angry, frustrated men; and angry frustrated men, from time immemorial, take out their rage on their women. We know right here at home in the United States that as male unemployment ticks ups, so does domestic abuse.
Now microfinance is not and should not be social work. It cannot solve domestic ills, but certainly gainful self-employment for men is a worthy goal that must not be ruled out a priori. Most men want to do right by their families: feed their children, clothe them, and educate them. They aspire to lives of meaning and purpose as much as their wives do. Whether we need organizations named Pro Hombre and Men’s World Banking, I don’t know. But something needs to be done, and soon, about this vast and vulnerable minority. There is a crisis of male unemployment around the world that is likely only to worsen in the coming years. This elephant in the room is not going to lumber away any time soon.
Have you read?
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
Equal Pay for Equal Work: Are MFIs Paying Women Employees the Same as Men?
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11 comments
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January 22, 2013 at 3:16 pm
erhyne
You must be right, Josh — apparently we couldn’t even find a photo of men.
January 22, 2013 at 3:35 pm
jeffmowatt
In the 1999 experiment which became the Tomsk Regional Initiative in Russia, although women borrowers outnumbered men by more than 4 to one, the rates of repayment and business survival typical for the ‘moral collateral’ lending model were still achieved, breaking the myth that the approach worked when women only were borrowers. The Tomsk Microfinance Bank was managed by Finca
January 23, 2013 at 5:20 pm
danielrozas
Josh — just to be provocative to Mr. Provocative: why is it that the reason to focus on men is not because the ability to earn an income is critical to one’s self-worth and dignity, not because joblessness and (male) suicide rates are closely correlated, not because employed or income-earning men are critical to stable and prosperous families and communities, not because focusing on half of the poor population is missing out on, well, half of the poor population? Instead, it seems we should do it because unemployed men beat up women? Because unemployed male youth are a frustrated and bored lot, who just want to f*** s*** up? Is fear of men the main argument for focusing on men? Really?
What if, instead of beating women and f***ing s*** up, our reaction to unemployment were to retreat to our secret man-caves, away from women and society, to sulk and commiserate with our unemployed brethren? Would we still matter then? Would anyone care?
Seems like a depressing reason for remembering the other half, be they better or worse…
Beth – I think the photographer, who bravely tried to photograph the unemployed men, must’ve been mauled beyond recognition… Hence no photo. 🙂
January 25, 2013 at 4:33 pm
Joshua Goldstein
Daniel, I couldn’t agree more that work offers self worth and dignity for men just as it does for women. Stating the obvious, no? Didn’t think that really had to be emphasized but given your response that was my mistake. But because MFIs have not done the kind of outreach to men that in my mind is called for, I did want to emphasize the dire consequences of not doing so for society at large. Fear and nightmares do tend to wake us up and make us pay attention and that was what I was trying to do.
January 30, 2013 at 11:44 am
Bob Bragar
Josh, I admire your provocation. It’s our mission to focus on people whom society traditionally did not want to hear from, who have been swept under the rug, so to speak. Minorities, people with handicaps, the poor, etc., are all the rightful focus of our work, regardless of their gender. As you point out, there were and are good reasons that microfinance focuses on women. Women belong to these other groups at the poorest levels, and the liberation of women is needed everywhere. What I regret is the stereotype of male MFI clients as irresponsible people who will drink away their income, while women would be said to spend their money more responsibly, on the family. Let’s cast that away.
January 31, 2013 at 7:13 pm
Joshua Goldstein
Bob–agreed. Thank you for your thoughtful comment.
February 1, 2013 at 1:44 am
John Gitau
Josh,
Reading what you have written and Bob’s response, with both of you being right, one can easily see where the problem lies. And it is advocacy based on dichotomy. This is the way I understand it: On one side is money ( finance), so neutral, so genderless, so objective, so natural. On the other side is its pursuers, so segmented, so dichotomized. Each segment has its advocates, and there seems to be competition. Those who speak on behalf of the disabled say they are ignored. Those for men say men are the new financial inclusion underdogs. Those for children say children should have a a bigger piece of the financial inclusion pie.
With the world getting flat, must financial inclusion be on pure categorization? Shouldn’t we just think of humanity and its access to financial services so that a human financial inclusion advocate in a village for example, is thinking how to have all villagers access financial services? If we figure out split advocacy in a village level, then we see division, clusterization as if all the human beings in a village have different characteristics that make them different from others. When priests and pastors are in church, they talk of a congregation. A president talks of citizens. We may argue that is already a dichotomy as we have citizens and non citizens but let us for once ignore that and assume that a citizenship covers all human beings within. Lets attempt a blur here.
In one example where I was teaching financial literacy to a group in a rural setting, a participant raised an issue of inability to make money due to physical incapacity. My thinking and advice at that point was that money has no bias. It is neutral. It doesn’t know who is abled or disabled. It is acquired by whoever has its desire and can think the best ways to access it by overcoming any difficulty on the way (mental or physical) through action. I didn’t want to entertain limitations based on self imposed thinking using physical limitation alibi. Don’t we have many people with physical limitations who make and manage money well? Lets not talk about how much of it here because that would open a huge debate, and some people are very good in justification, blaming and complaining supported by prowess in logic.
Split advocacy may not be the best financial inclusion division of labor. A financial education teacher should be able to think the best ways to have everybody access financial services and manage money well for well-being.,Otherwise, we may end up having financial education for children, for women, for men, for the sick, for street families, for jailed men, for single parents, for catholics, for non believers etc( parallel to the distinctions in the best seller book series of Chicken Soup)
February 4, 2013 at 7:18 am
Joshua Goldstein
John, you make a wonderful point. If only disparate groups advocated as one to achieve economic citizenship for all. Why did “split advocacy” come about in the first place? Probably because human beings are tribal and it seems a natural, if tragic tendency, to put themselves into separate categories. And then advocate as a group based on what defines them uniquely, not their common humanity. The question is: Can this be changed? I am not sure. But there is reason for skepticism, given our collective past. But if we can turn a page on this “special interest group” advocacy and factionalism, that would be truly revolutionary in human history.
February 5, 2013 at 6:43 am
John Gitau
I like that perspective Josh and I am thinking: what of emulating what works from other industries, borrowing the fundamentals and applying them relevantly in the financial inclusion agenda for starters? Can we borrow from industrialists? A shoe manufacturer makes shoes for human beings for example, and the distinction in shoes sizes is not hyped as a distinction but positively as a niche. Food manufacturers make food for human beings with packaging not hyped as distinction but ease of access in terms of money. So, we have a 20 ml tooth paste as we have a 200 ml tube. And drugs makers manufacturing medicine for human beings classification being dosage that defines consumption. And recently, technology such as M-pesa accessible to everyone with money to transfer, amounts being the distinction but determined by the consumer. It is a tool for all with an access to a phone, irrespective of economic status.
Those are just a few examples and if we trail our eyes in that direction, we can unearth more. Now, compare the above with for example gender based split advocacy. What has a body anatomy got to do with the mental faculty as far as money access is concerned? How different is the anatomic element from a shoe size or drug dosage or even a packet of sugar in a 500 grams package?
I admire the marketing field. How are they able to create interest in a product and drive consumers of all shades to buy the product? In the marketer’s mind is buyers and categories are just niches, positive positive, positive, no war, no quarrel. It is tempting to consult experts in the marketing field for advice on how to drive human beings to financial inclusion. The only risk is that if that were to succeed, the pro-division, clusterers may go without work.
February 5, 2013 at 6:02 pm
Joshua Goldstein
This is a very interesting idea that deserves serious thought! Of course a countervailing trend in marketing is subdividing consumers into smaller and smaller speciality niches. (At least from what I read.) It would be great to have a conversation about this to explore further.
Thank you very much for this important contribution.
Josh
February 6, 2013 at 12:43 pm
Daniel Rozas
Here’s a fascinating study on this topic: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=3169
“We found that countries that do have more liberalized markets, including increased flow of capital and thus the ability to make more loans, also [can] support a lot more microfinance activity, which is good,” Wry says. “But we also found that these same factors that would make a country attractive to MFIs also made it less likely that they would lend to women.”
And this:
“Our results indicate that a business-friendly economic climate has the potential to undermine” microfinance’s goal of empowering women, and that this effect is “amplified in patriarchal countries where the need for lending to women is greatest.”