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"Supporting Women's Livelihoods - Microfinance that Works for the Majority" : Table of Contents
Part IV: Effective Service Delivery Mechanisms
An MFI’s
choice of delivery mechanisms plays a crucial role in determining
the numbers of women who gain access to its products. Even the
best-designed financial services will not produce the desired
benefits for women if they cannot access them. Conversely, certain
methods of product delivery can work to maximize the benefits
available to women. This section examines outreach and service
delivery methods, citing best practices in these two critical
areas for women clients. Whatever their core product, these methods
can be used by MFIs to ensure that product availability translates
into accessibility and benefits for women.
Identify Women Clients
In the programmes
most successful at reaching women borrowers, loan officers are
proactive; they seek out women clients in marketplaces, neighborhoods,
the street, clinics, religious gatherings, and low- income residential
areas. They talk to other entrepreneurs or people in the neighborhood
to discover likely candidates. Because the highest percentages
of women are found in commercial and service enterprises, many
of which are based in homes, loan officers must look beyond areas
with high concentrations of manufacturing enterprises to locate
women entrepreneurs.
Ensure that Institutions Are Conveniently Located with Suitable
Hours of Operation
Financial service transactions for women should take place near their homes or businesses and be completed quickly. Women tend to have less free time than men do, and to be less mobile. Responsibilities such as family meal preparation and child care tie women to the home for much of each day and leave little opportunity for travel to distant financial institutions. Women also have less cash for transportation and less likelihood of owning transport. In some situations, cultural and religious barriers further inhibit their mobility. Security issues, both for the MFI and the women travelling to and from it, should also be considered when MFIs determine branch locations and hours.
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BRINGING BANKING HOME Instead
of bringing customers to its branches, the National Bank
for Development (NBD) in Egypt is bringing branches to its
customers. In NBD’s mobile banking strategy, minivans
carrying loan officers, tellers, and a driver-cum-security
guard visit areas in Cairo where the bank does not have
offices. These mobile branches collect repayments, disburse
new loans, review applications, and conduct all other business
normally carried on in their regular branch offices. Mobile
branches enable the bank to know its clients while combining
the discipline of commercial banks with the outreach of
NGOs. This strategy has the potential to help NBD greatly
increase its outreach to women clients. Source: Dhumale, Sapcanin, and Tucker n.d. |
Communicate
with Women about Financial Services
In most countries,
female communication channels are different from those of men.
Women tend to be less literate and are therefore less likely to
learn of programmes through written media. Radio and television
are alternatives. Visits by loan officers to neighborhoods, homes,
and gathering places can prove highly successful, particularly
in settings where religiously rooted suspicions of such programmes
are prevalent. Loan officers should speak with potential clients
in women's organizations, ROSCAs, the marketplace, or the street
in the case of ambulant vendors, rather than relying on the written
word. Any training should stress visual materials to overcome
lower literacy rates and should be as participatory as possible,
using groups to reinforce the learning.
Encourage Female Extension Officers and Gender Sensitization
The choice
of male or female loan officers is highly dependent on local conditions.
Female promoters are necessary in conservative Islamic areas such
as Pakistan, parts of the Middle East, and African enclaves where
seclusion is strictly observed. In less conservative Islamic countries,
such as Bangladesh or Morocco, female promoters may be desirable
but not essential. In some cases, especially in high-crime urban
areas, the safety of female loan officers is an issue because
they often visit borrowers in the evening.
Some in the microfinance industry see the hiring of female staff
as a point of tension between the twin goals of gender equity
and financial sustainability. They are concerned that certain
factors, such as the demands of maternity or women’s potential
inability to work in certain areas or at certain times, raise
personnel costs. It is worth remembering, however, that female
staff can dramatically expanding an institution’s outreach
to female clients, increasing its client base and potentially
enhancing its financial performance. Gender-sensitive hiring policies
are also an important element in building an institutional culture
that supports outreach to women clients as well as a gender-equitable
workplace.
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MFI VOICES ON FEMALE STAFF A
survey of fifteen MFIs conducted by SUM revealed that institutions
were committed to gender equity in their hiring practices
despite certain difficulties associated with employing female
staff. The majority of institutions that responded said
they faced no constraints in identifying, hiring, or retaining
women. Half also reported having policies in place to actively
promote the hiring of women staff. However, a few institutions
did report facing obstacles in this task, including a lack
of female candidates with adequate education, women’s
reluctance or inability to travel into remote areas, and
their increased likelihood of leaving jobs due to personal
reasons such as marriage or pregnancy. Nevertheless, respondent
institutions were almost universally in agreement about
the main advantage of hiring women loan officers: their
access to and ability to attract female clients. Source: SUM research. |
Consider
Programmes for Both Genders
In the past,
microfinance programmes have been specifically targeted to women
for a variety of reasons. These include an intent to influence
the welfare of the household and children; a desire to reach directly
the poorest of the economically active; perceptions of women as
more responsible financial services clients; or concern that,
in mixed groups, women would otherwise be left out.
Circumstances under which women-specific programmes may be appropriate
and should be considered include when:
- Women
are in seclusion;
- Cultural
values inhibit women from participating; and
- Women have
been bypassed so consistently that action is required to compensate
for unequal access.
However, the
ultimate goal, where culturally permitted, should be the full
participation of both women and men in mixed-gender programmes
that provide equitable access to savings and credit facilities.
Some organizations start by focusing on women and extend services
to men once they have been successful in establishing permanent
outreach to women in the community.
In countries like Bangladesh, where there are more opportunities
available to obtain microfinance for women than men, it is suspected
that women frequently divert loans to their husbands. While this
is not necessarily a negative phenomenon when viewing the household
as an economic unit, it can be an extra burden for women if they
are held responsible for repayment without any say in the management
or use of the funds.
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REACHING WOMEN THROUGH DEDICATED DIVISIONS In
a country where only three per cent of business owners are
women, specialized outreach and delivery strategies have
helped Pakistan’s Network Leasing Corporation (NLC)
garner a client base that is 22 per cent female. A dedicated
Women’s Division with an all-female staff runs a three-tier
programme that caters to the diverse needs of NLC’s
female clients. This division provides services tailored
to women with established businesses; to professional women,
such as doctors, who need financing for professional equipment;
to semiskilled women working from home; to women who have
recently graduated from vocational training programmes;
and to unskilled women who are new to any type of income-generating
activity. NLC is also developing specialized training programmes
focusing on the particular business development needs of
each of the latter two categories. Source: SUM research. |
Encourage
Participation
Women clients
can be involved in many levels of an MFI’s operations, often
to the benefit of both the institution and the customer. Soliciting
clients’ input in product design, for example, can enhance
both the accessibility and the impact of an MFI’s products
and services, increasing its outreach. MFIs, donors, and researchers
have developed myriad methods for obtaining such feedback, from
the anecdotal to the highly rigorous. The Union Regional de Apoyo
Campesino in Mexico, for example, has engaged in an informal process
of monitoring client satisfaction through regular consultations
between loan officers and clients, and has used the information
gleaned from this process to design a range of tailored savings
products. Such methods have the advantage of imposing minimal
costs on the MFI since they are built into everyday operations.
A wide variety of formal market research tools, including focus
groups and interviews as well as traditional survey methods, have
also been developed to gather data on client-level impact more
systematically. If correctly integrated into management processes
and information systems, this data can also be invaluable for
discerning trends in customer demand.
Another highly effective way of guaranteeing client input into
all aspects of an MFI’s operations is demonstrated by the
Sri Lankan organization Janashakti. Janashakti is completely owned
and managed by its all-female membership, which in 2000 counted
over 27,000 women. A five-tiered federation of regional and local
women’s organizations, Janashakti has managed to achieve
institutional coherency and continuity by establishing tight links
between the different tiers and by perpetually recruiting and
developing leaders from within the ranks of its members. While
this process gives grassroots women the chance to gain skills
and experience, thus achieving Janashakti’s social goal of
empowering of poor women, it also ensures that accurate information
about the needs of the membership base is constantly flowing to
policy-making levels within the organization.
To sum up, the following service delivery mechanisms maximize
the benefits of microfinance for women. Implementers should:
- Adopt
a market perspective so that client preferences are understood
and products are designed to meet them. See women as clients
or market segments, not beneficiaries of development projects;
- Decentralize
operations so that banking is convenient for women borrowers,
with conveniently located or mobile units;
- Actively
seek out women clients in the areas where they live and work;
- Advertise
financial services through channels to which women have access;
- Provide
intensive practical training for developing a motivated cadre
of workers and organizers;
- Mainstream
gender in the MFI through sensitization and the hiring of female
staff;
- Consider
the appropriateness of targeting women only;
- When possible,
incorporate client participation in processes such as product
design, monitoring, and evaluation;
- Reduce
transaction costs for clients through efficient and streamlined
operations;
- Charge
interest rates sufficient to cover the full costs of delivering
the product; and
- Employ
banking rigor and disciplined operations.
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PARTICIPATORY PROGRAMME DESIGN: CASE ONE The
international Coalition for Women and Credit sponsored a
Women and Microenterprise Initiative, which sought to facilitate
the development of a permanent structure and culture that
would involve microentrepreneurs in all processes of the
institutions that serve them. Begun in 1998 in Colombia,
Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic, the Initiative proceeded
in four phases.
The
increased leadership capacity that this Initiative has generated
was evidenced by the creation of ANAMUMPE, a national businesswomen’s
association organized by participants in the Dominican Republic.
Since its inception in July 1999, ANAMUMPE has helped to
increase the visibility of women in the micro and small
enterprise sector and as such is valued as an important
association. Members of ANAMUMPE have participated in different
forums that address issues that affect the micro and small
enterprise sector, and they have developed and strengthened
their network with the microfinance sector as well as with
representatives of the National Congress. The women members
of ANAMUMPE have gained skills in public speaking, in organizing
and managing the Association, and in managing relationships
with a range of institutions. All of these accomplishments
are contributing to an increase in their leverage as an
Association representative of a large sector in the country.
Source: International Coalition on Women and Credit. 1999. PARTICIPATORY
PROGRAMME DESIGN: CASE TWO The
Internal Learning System (ILS) is a participatory impact
assessment and planning system that employs pictorial diaries
that are kept at various levels in an MFI’s structure:
members, groups, area centers, and/or headquarters. Developed
and field tested in India, the ILS diary allows members
of microfinance groups to track changes in their lives on
a number of fronts, which the MFI or the members themselves
can select. This data is then collected and analyzed by
members at the group level, and the aggregated information
sent upwards to the next level, until it reaches MFI headquarters.
ILS users at each level are thus the first to learn about
programme impact and performance, and, because ILS links
impact assessment results to user-driven training and planning,
alter their operations accordingly. ILS is also useful in
that it tracks changes over time, allowing users to establish
a baseline against which to periodically measure progress.
And because ILS is flexible in terms of both structure and
content, MFIs can tailor it for use according to their time
and human resource capacities. MFIs
in India have used ILS to improve programme operations and
better gauge client needs in order to formulate appropriate
programmatic responses. In one NGO, women were repeatedly
recording diversion of their business loan to consumption
use in their diaries, specifically purchase of school supplies
and uniforms. The organization’s planning solution
was to create a special savings instrument for members with
school-age children that would be cashed in at the beginning
of the school term. For women users, the ILS diary serves as a record of their living conditions. Women in India have therefore been able to use it to lobby for eligibility for government asset programmes, electricity, looms, housing and livestock grants and issuance of ration cards. Among ILS users tracking empowerment indicators, there has also been a marked decrease in the incidence of domestic violence and male addictions and non-support, and a steady rise in the number of women speaking out in public meetings, approaching institutions and organizing other women. Source: Helzi Noponen |
