Female Empowerment

What initially drew me to Grameen Bank was the potential of micro-credit to challenge traditional attitudes towards gender equity. The goal of the micro-credit summit campaign was not simply to reach women but empower them. This meant developing micro- and macro-level strategies to achieve gender equality in power, rights and resources. Yet, empowerment is a culturally specific word. A young female receiving a liberal arts education in the west has a much different understanding of empowerment as compared to an uneducated woman growing up in a rural village. Therefore, until I could answer the question does access to credit necessarily lead to economic, social and political empowerment, I first needed to learn how both Grameen and its borrowers understood the concept.

First, I came up with my own working definition. I see economic empowerment as access and control over resources and the ability to earn an income to meet basic needs. Social empowerment means an individual's sense of self-worth and purpose; one who is socially empowered perceives others as respecting her thoughts and opinions and carries hopes for the future. Achieving political empowerment means having the ability to take on leadership roles and gaining mobility and negotiating power. Self-reliance and independence fall into this category. Still, I wondered whether economic empowerment necessarily led to these more abstract, less quantifiable forms of power. On the one hand, a woman might hold great wealth but neither respect nor value herself; on the other hand, a woman could have no income and live at the mercy of her husband and still perceive herself as an important and worthy individual. In other words, what if someone considered herself empowered even though she did not fit into a traditional definition. What if a woman’s perception of self-worth does not translate into actual well-being or positive gender roles? At what point do you interfere in the culture to challenge gender inequities if the women do not see themselves in a disadvantaged position?

Therefore, my next task was to discover whether or not Grameen borrowers saw themselves as disempowered before having access to credit and how did they perceive themselves afterwards. Furthermore, how did the women define empowerment and what steps did they see as necessary in order to achieve it? It was important for me to meet with the borrowers in an all female setting. Dipah, a Bangladeshi intern, agreed to join me on the village visit. However, the male branch manager did not seem so keen on leaving us alone with the interviewees. Pompously walking into the room, he took the chair the woman was sitting on and explained that he needed to be present in case the borrowers misunderstood something about Grameen Bank. He assured me that he “understood” women because he spent a great deal of time working with them. To think you can “know” a person and understand what it means to be a woman in Bangladesh is an arrogant assumption. While I sat glaringly, Dipah diplomatically reiterated that this was a woman’s only space and reluctantly he agreed to wait outside.

The villager I interviewed was named Nazme, and she lived with her husband in a comfortable house and had a 17-year-old son and 11 year old daughter. She took her first loan 17 years ago to buy a cow and today she rents out her house while her husband drives taxis. I asked what life was like before becoming a Grameen borrower and what was the extent of her mobility. She explained that prior to joining Grameen she stayed at home and rarely went out but admitted that even now she infrequently leaves except for the weekly borrowers meetings. Initially, people discouraged her from taking the loan, feeling it would be indecent for her to handle money, but today she is proudly taking a 50,000 taka loan. I asked if her husband demanded she stop being a borrower, how would she feel, and her response was that this would upset her greatly, but of course she would follow his wishes. The man runs the family and is the ultimate decision-maker; yet, she confessed that Grameen Bank has given her more negotiating power. She has more courage to ask her husband for money, because she feels like a contributor rather than a burden. In sum, access to credit has not completely deconstructed the patriarchal culture, but it has given her more freedom to move within it.

In addition, while at first all 16 decisions were hard, now they have become easier to follow. The 16 decisions are guidelines from which all members are supposed to memorize and live by; they include tasks such as maintaining a certain standard of living, educating children, cleaning the environment, and upholding justice. Yet, she claims that eliminating dowry has proved the most formidable decision to follow. Dowry is inevitable because without it, a daughter has no worth and will not get married. Therefore, until the women show themselves to be substantial providers, dowry will continue. I then asked her if she ever felt invisible. She nodded her head slowly and explained that it was hard living in her husband’s village and she often missed the intimacy of her own family. Her answer to the question should women purse male-dominated occupations was no. Women have a duty to cook, clean and provide for their family. Her family is her sole responsibility; it is both her greatest burden and greatest joy. These answers showed that she did perceive herself as being unappreciated and as carrying a heavy work load but did not necessarily see the need to challenge certain gender roles and traditions. In her opinion, the cultural climate was not yet ready to handle major shifts in regards to treatment of women but noted improvements in her personal standard of living.

I found it interesting that when I asked how she defined empowerment and feminism, these words did not translate into Bangla. She wanted me to define them in order for her to understand what I meant; yet, I hesitated in doing this because my intention was to learn what she believed constituted as empowerment. She finally explained that her sense of self-worth is contingent on her family's accomplishments. Her aspirations in life are to see her children well-educated and employed. While I saw empowerment in individualistic terms such as an individual’s sense of value, she defined it in a collective sense and her empowerment stemmed from the health and success of her family. Therefore, if Grameen is helping women better provide for their family by putting food on the table and offering education loans, according to Nazme’s definition, micro-credit is a tool to empowerment.

I next interviewed Ms. Jannat-E-Quanine, Deputy General Manager of Grameen Bank, who was one of the first women to join Professor Yunus’s team thirty years prior. She explained that the poor women in Bangladesh are a vulnerable group who has never been introduced to the concept of feminism. From birth they are treated as a liability rather than an asset, and women act as silent figures, waking up before all others to clean and cook. From Ms. Jannat’s experience, she has seen how Grameen affects the family dynamic. The borrower’s children and husband respect her now because she is monetarily contributing to the family. For many women, this is the first time they have touched so much money in their life. When the borrower expands her business and employs other women, for the first time she is the boss who gives commands. According to Ms. Jannat, material assets such as electricity and running water translate into social and political empowerment because it is affecting micro-level change, which will gradually affect the macro-level development agenda. Even though dowry is still common and women are not given equal opportunities in all situations, eventually as women prove themselves as capable in the business world, a systematic change in attitudes towards women will take place.

Grameen does not take a direct top down approach but through the 16 decisions and through encouraging education, they slowly allow for a more accommodating culture. When a woman wants to take out a micro-enterprise loan, or a substantially larger loan for a business initiative, the Grameen staff member meets with the entire family, addressing the man and woman as equal partners. They do not directly target the mother, for this would create marital competition, but subtly ask about the daughter's educational pursuits. Grameen Internship Coordinator Mr. Harun explains, “We indirectly challenge the culture because a direct attack hurts the ego. We look towards changing the future generations.” Furthermore, by addressing women by their first names rather than their surname and by teaching them how to write their signature, they indirectly show woman their individual worth. As children are encouraged to attend school rather than go to the field, there is the potential to implement liberal ideas in the early stages of development to gradually transform the culture. This way, the change will not be perceived as a top-down enforced policy, which often results in resentment and revolt, but instead the ideas can naturally evolve and people will perceive the change as coming from within.

Yet, I still worry that while much is being done to target women, there does not seem to be a specific effort to enlist men in the struggle to challenge gender inequity. When I asked Janaat what Grameen was doing to mobilize men, she in turn asked me what were my specific thoughts. I realize that if men refuse to wear the condom or change their attitudes and behavior, it is difficult to promote change by force. One suggestion would be for Grameen Education to implement a woman’s history course into their school’s curriculum. I would also hope to see more female Grameen branch managers in the future, so when the children of borrowers attend their mother’s meetings, they have a female role model to look up to.

After eight weeks interning with Grameen, I am still not convinced that providing women access to credit automatically leads to economic, social, and political empowerment; however, I do believe it is a first and necessary step. I also have faith in the potential of social businesses to challenge gender practices by enlisting the support of women and to change the traditional business model from a profit-driven motive to a more social, ethical and environmental goal. While the system has its faults, micro-credit does offer hope. It provides an opportunity to improve that was never before available, and this in itself is an empowering idea.

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