Daily Graphic. Pg 11. Thurs. Feb. 18/10
Article: Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho
MAAME Esi, a petty trader, started her business five years ago by moving from office to office to sell her wares.
In 2009, she secured a loan under one of the savings and loan schemes, and today she is a big time entrepreneur.
Hitherto, Maame Esi had to depend on her husband anytime she ran out of money for her business, and this made her vulnerable in the marriage as she had no say in the management of the house, with regard to the education of their children and other decisions related to their marriage.
Today, out of the proceeds from her shop, she is able to contribute to their children’s education and she has taken up the responsibility of paying the utility bills in the home while her husband also takes care of the rent and other bills.
Through the loan, she is now empowered both economically and socially, as she can now make decisions to protect herself and her family. She now takes part in decision-making concerning her children and their general welfare, and she can also negotiate for sex with her husband.
Micro-finance and micro-insurance schemes are innovative ways of providing the poor with access to capital and thus a way out of poverty. Women, especially, often lack access to financial resources necessary to escape poverty and social dependency.
Micro-credit schemes enable women to engage in economic activities as well as join social networks through which both poverty and social dependency could be overcome.
Micro-credit, according to economic analysts is among the strongest, if not the strongest development strategies that work in developing countries for women.
However, targeted micro-credit schemes are said to have proved to be an exceptionally effective tool for poverty alleviation for the urban and rural poor, as well as women in general.
Micro-credit is particularly conducive to empowering women in urban areas and micro-credit institutions can provide vital services beyond credit, such as information, community formation and fostering, mutual support networks and counselling among others.
Micro-credit has empowered women in a number of ways such as improved access to health and education, allied with expanded opportunities for employment and access to micro-credit and has also expanded choice and empowered women.
With increased social and political consciousness, women can now be said to be more likely to take part in local government and national elections. They are gaining control over their lives, reducing their dependency and taking a greater part in family decision making processes.
While disparities still exist, women who are well resourced have become increasingly powerful catalysts for development, demanding greater control over fertility and birth spacing, education for their daughters, and access to services.
Micro-credit, micro-finance and micro-enterprise are now seen as effective poverty alleviation mechanisms, especially for poor women.
A Micro-Credit Summit Campaign in 1997 aimed at ensuring that “100 million of the world’s poorest families, especially the women of those families, receive credit for self-employment and other financial and business services by the year 2005”.
Many micro-credit schemes specifically target women as they have proven to be very good credit risks with high repayment ratios even with credit at market rates.
It is argued that as well as increasing women’s income, micro-credit programmes also improve women’s role in the household. Thus through the provision of economic resources, a woman may gain greater voice in expenditure decisions.
It also helps to increase women’s confidence because they gain not only through the economic success of their businesses but also through increased access to community services and collective action with other women.
Recently, the Greater Accra Regional Secretariat of the National Population Council in collaboration with the regional office of the Department of Women, organised an exhibition in Accra to showcase the handiwork of women in small scale businesses.
The exhibition was in line with the theme of the 2009 World Population Day celebration, ‘Responding to the economic crises: Investing in women is a smart choice’.
According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) no one knows yet what the full scale of the global economic crisis will look like.
It however said women and children in developing countries would bear the brunt of the impact, saying that what started as a financial crisis in rich countries was now deepening into a global economic crisis that was hitting developing countries hard, and that it was already affecting progress towards reducing poverty.
According to the UNFPA, policy responses that build on women's roles as economic agents could do a lot to mitigate the effects of the crisis on development, especially because women, more than men, invested their earnings in the health and education of their children.
Investments in public health, education, child care and other social services helped to mitigate the impact of the crisis on the entire family and raise productivity for a healthier economy.
The Greater Accra Regional Population Officer, Mrs Ellen Osei-Tutu, at the exhibition added her voice to the call to empower women economically to reduce their dependency on their male partners.
She said women were economic agents who could plough back their earnings in supporting their male partners to develop their families and the nation.
Women who are economically empowered, she said, were respected by their husbands and partners because they contributed to the family’s welfare.
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