Review of Political Economy, Volume 22, Number 2, 181 –204, April 2010
Assessing Microcredit in Bangladesh: A Critique of the Concept of Empowerment NAHID ASLANBEIGUI, GUY OAKES & NANCY UDDIN Monmouth University, West Long Branch, NJ, USA
ABSTRACT Assessing microcredit programs by testing their contribution to the empowerment of borrowers has been widely advocated and explored in the literature on women and development. There is considerable debate on whether microcredit empowers or disempowers women, and there are attempts to reconcile conflicting conclusions based on heterogeneous samples or data sets and grounded in a variety of methodologies. Although there is little agreement on the relation between microcredit and empowerment and no consensus on the meaning of the idea of empowerment itself, students of gender and development seem to be at one in regarding empowerment as a logically unproblematic concept. We argue that the idea of empowerment employed in this literature is vulnerable to a number of logical criticisms and cannot serve as a sound basis for determining the value of microcredit to borrowers. Our research suggests that in assessing the impact of microcredit, it is essential to consider generational and inter-generational differences it makes in the lives of borrowers and their families. Results of ethnographic work conducted in January 2008 on long-term borrowers of the Grameen Bank inform the exposition of the arguments.
1. Introduction Assessing microcredit programs by testing their contribution to the empowerment of borrowers has been widely advocated and explored in the literature on gender and development.1 There is considerable debate on whether microcredit empowers or disempowers women,2 and there are attempts to reconcile conflicting Correspondence Address: Nahid Aslanbeigui, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, NJ 07764, USA. Email:
[email protected] 1
Some microcredit programs have developed into microfinance institutions, providing other financial services to the poor such as deposit collection, pension plans, and life, health, and rainfall insurance. For differences between microcredit and microfinance, see Armenda´riz & Morduch (2005), and Qudrat-I Elahi & Rahman (2006). On Grameen’s microleasing experience see Dowla (2004). 2 See, for example, Bernasek (2003); Corsi et al. (2006); Edward & Olsen (2006); Holvoet (2005); Hunt & Kasynathan (2001); Isserles (2003); Izugbara (2004); Kabeer (1999, ISSN 0953-8259 print/ISSN 1465-3982 online/10/020181– 24 # 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/09538251003665446
182 N. Aslanbeigui et al. conclusions based on heterogeneous samples or data sets and grounded in a variety of methodologies (see Kabeer, 1998, 2001). Although there is little agreement on the relation between microcredit and empowerment, and no consensus on the meaning of the idea of empowerment itself, students of gender and development seem to be at one in regarding empowerment as an unproblematic concept. The ensuing discussion takes a less sanguine view. We argue that the idea of empowerment employed in this literature is vulnerable to a number of logical criticisms and cannot serve as a sound basis for determining the value of microcredit to borrowers. Even a cursory survey of the literature on empowerment, gender, and development is out of the question in an article of reasonable length. For this reason, we base our critique on an analysis of the work of three widely cited sets of authors who have made substantial contributions to research in this area (Goetz & Sen Gupta, 1996; Hashemi et al., 1996; Kabeer, 1998, 2001, 2005a). Our strategy is to focus on some of the best and most influential studies of the relationship between microcredit and empowerment in Bangladesh. This work makes a powerful case for assessing microcredit by considering its consequences for empowerment. We suggest an alternative mode of assessment that does not share the weaknesses of empowerment and is promising in other respects: evaluating microcredit by examining its effects on the life histories of borrowers and their families. Our proposal calls for an analysis of long-term trends in life histories and intergenerational effects of microcredit that is missing in the literature. This paper employs results of ethnographic work conducted in January 2008 on long-term borrowers of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.3 We interviewed ten village women in three districts located in the vicinity of the capital city: Manikgonj, Dhaka and Gazipur. Each interview lasted approximately two hours. To maintain uniformity across subjects, we used a questionnaire that included a standard set of 57 questions (see Table 1 for a summary of demographic information). Subjects compared their lives before receiving their first loans from the Grameen Bank with their lives in 2008. Many questions were open-ended, and subjects were encouraged to respond with as much detail as they felt comfortable. After we arrived in Bangladesh, Grameen Bank representatives identified interviewees on the basis of our two criteria. Because of time constraints, subjects would be located within commutable distance from Dhaka, where we were based. Since we were investigating long-term impacts of microcredit, subjects would have an extensive microcredit history. Subjects were chosen on interview days depending on the availability of Grameen’s branch officers and the interviewees themselves. Although one author is bilingual in Bengali and English, we retained the services of an interpreter fluent in several Bengali dialects. Interviews were conducted in the homes of the subjects. Periodically, family members, Bank officers, or neighbors dropped in
2005b); Mayoux (1999, 2001); Murthy et al. (2008); Rahman (1999); Rahman Khan (1999); Rowlands (1997); Schuler et al. (1996); and Todd (1996). 3 Before arriving in Bangladesh, we also contacted BRAC (Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee) in order to interview some of its long-term borrowers. Our numerous emails received no response.
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Demographic characteristics of ten Grameen long-term borrowers, January
Subject’s pseudonym
No. of years as borrower
Age at time of interview
Rashida Mandira Mahmuda Usha Fatima Minothi Sadeka Selina Khadija Rahima
18 23 23 18 20 17 18 17 16 19
50 60 40– 45 40– 45 55– 60 36 40 34 39 60
Highest level of education 9th grade none none 5th grade none 8th grade none 6th grade 7th grade none
Current marital status Married Widow Married Married Widow Married Divorced Married Married Divorced
No. of surviving children 2 6 4 3 5 2 2 2 3 3
on the conversations but did not stay for the entire duration of the interviews. The observed composure of subjects did not vary with the number, status, or gender of observants. Our sample is obviously small and not random. Because we do not perform statistical analysis on the data, these considerations are immaterial to our conclusions. We designed our ethnographic study to inform the exposition of our arguments, the logic and validity of which are independent of field work.
2. Assessing Microcredit Fatima is between 55 and 60, an unschooled Bangladeshi woman who has been borrowing from the Grameen Bank for 20 years. Before joining the Bank, she married an unschooled man and had six children, three boys and three girls. They lived in extreme poverty. The husband pulled a rickshaw van to transport goods, and she made puffed rice for wealthy landlords, receiving as wages a handful of rice and a bit of cash. Family income was only enough to feed the couple and their children twice a day and not sufficient to cover medical treatment of the husband and the oldest son, both of whom suffered from an undiagnosed abdominal disease. Because of the leaky thatched roof of their house, they slept under umbrellas during the rainy season. The husband, who earned most of their cash income, made all the family decisions. Fatima was unhappy with her low status in the extended family that resulted from this arrangement. Members of her community would not lend her money, even the smallest sums, because they were convinced she could not repay them. There was never enough food, and family members were perpetually quarreling. Life was miserable and filled with uncertainty. In 1988, Fatima was introduced to the Grameen microcredit initiative by other borrowers. Beginning with small sums to establish a traditional female business, making puffed rice in her bari, her loans became progressively larger. Fatima’s husband abandoned the rickshaw van and devoted himself to her business, which
184 N. Aslanbeigui et al. became a family enterprise—the husband performing all tasks outside the household, from purchasing unhusked rice to transporting the finished product and selling it. He continued to make most of the family and business decisions until disaster struck some five years after her first loan: both he and the oldest son succumbed to the undiagnosed illness. After their deaths, she assumed management of the business and operated it for two more years, following which she bought 60 decimals of land in order to plant rice.4 Additional loans for a new house and a tubewell followed. She continued to manage her loans and make independent business decisions for another five years. In 1998, she relinquished control of her loans to her sons, who were old enough to assume responsibility. How should the effectiveness of Fatima’s loans be determined? The chief problem that bedevils any evaluation of microcredit based on its contribution to the empowerment of women is the concept of empowerment itself. In assessing microcredit by reference to empowerment, it is necessary to arrive at a standard of empowerment that programs of microcredit approximate in some degree, a set of conditions for empowerment that microcredit initiatives satisfy or fail to satisfy. Consider the events that ensued when Fatima granted control of her loans to her sons. One son started a garment business, for which she took two large loans. The other son established a jute business supported by a third substantial loan that she assumed. Fatima continues to borrow large sums, which she surrenders to her sons. They pay the installments, manage the income, and consult her in making business decisions. The only direct income she seems to control is the monthly rent from a house she built with a Grameen loan. Today, she lives in semi-retirement with her two sons, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren in a spacious house built with profits made from investing her loans. The extended family has a comfortable income. They are well-fed and clothed and own a television and dining room set as well as abundant furniture that fills the sons’ bedrooms. Fatima feels she enjoys a status equal to that of the other adults in her household, a circumstance she attributes to her microcredit history. She has also become a respected member of her community. One of her sons is regularly asked to resolve conflicts in the village. The villagers know his mother and respect her because of her son’s judgment. She is no longer ashamed to appear in public and is quite comfortable moving outside her bari. And why not? She owns two houses, and a piece of land she bought with a Grameen loan following the death of her husband has increased a stunning one thousand fold in value. Her sons are erecting a five-story building on land registered in her name. Fatima declares that she and her children are happy (shukhi). Which, if any, of these effects of her loans qualify as empowerment? A general standard of empowerment presupposes a conceptual consensus on the substance of the idea: its force or meaning as well as its reference and scope. In the present state of the literature, a consensus is not on the horizon. There is no agreement on the conditions that, if satisfied, would entail that women are empowered. Nor is there even agreement on precisely what the empowerment of women signifies. The import and implications of the concept shift from author to author 4
A decimal is 1/100 of one acre.
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and study to study, a state of confusion that explains why some publications use the term liberally but place it in single quotation marks—‘empowerment’— marking its problematic status (Mayoux, 2001, p. 430).5
2.1. Problems of Definition In their essay on managing loan use in rural Bangladeshi microcredit programs, Goetz & Sen Gupta note that although the concept of empowerment is a basic theoretical premise of research on gender and development, it is rarely specified with any precision. Does empowerment entail a capacity to invest loans profitably? Or does it identify changes in gender relations such as an increase in women’s control over household decisions, physical security, and reproduction? Or are these two sets of variables interdependent—profitable investment of loans presupposes improvements in gender relations, which also depend on successful investment (Goetz & Sen Gupta, 1996, p. 47)? Although the authors do not respond to these questions directly, they address them by introducing several distinctions. Empowerment differs from both access to credit and changes in gender relations. It also differs from ‘strategic gains’ in intra-household decision making and resource allocation. Finally, effects of changes in income should not be conflated with effects of empowerment. Goetz & Sen Gupta analyze women’s managerial control of loan use in production as one aspect of empowerment. They do not suppose that their analysis provides an exhaustive account of the concept. As they note, there are ‘many other aspects of women’s empowerment which might have been explored’ (Goetz & Sen Gupta, 1996, p. 48). However, they do not offer a rationale for treating control of loan use as an element of empowerment. Is there a rationale? Is there, for example, good reason to suppose that the empowerment of women depends upon their control of productive assets acquired by means of loans? Our interviews document considerable diversity in degrees and varieties of control of loan use both from woman to woman and within the microcredit history of a given woman. Consider, for example, Usha, who operated a puffedrice business in the first decade of her 18-year membership in the Grameen Bank. Although she applied for the loans and provided the labor, her husband purchased the inputs and sold the product. With profits from the puffed-rice business, Usha started a poultry business that she has managed exclusively for the past 12 years, from buying chicks to selling eggs and disposing over the income. Thus, in her borrowing career, Usha has moved from shared to complete control of her loans. The 18-year loan history of Sadeka reverses the course taken by Usha. She began borrowing after she and her two children left her husband, who had taken another wife. She operated her first business, puffed rice, for ten years, procuring inputs, supplying labor, and controlling income. Like many Bangladeshi women, she relied on a male member of her family, her younger brother, to sell 5
Since the word ‘empowerment’ appears frequently in this paper, rendering it in single quotation marks would be tedious and distracting. Thus, we have not employed this convention, in spite of the problems posed by the concept.
186 N. Aslanbeigui et al. the product in the market. For the past eight years, she has owned a poultry business in which she has taken a much less active role. Her Grameen loans have enabled her to purchase 1,000 hens, which lay some 600 eggs daily. Her son manages the operations and controls the income. Selina and her husband, on the other hand, can be considered as operating joint ventures. A Grameen member for 17 years, she has invested in several businesses, including raising poultry and fish, selling saris and Indonesian glass, and running a shop that merchandises mobile phones and cosmetics. Her investment decisions have been made jointly, and she manages all her businesses with the assistance of male members of her household. In purchasing supplies, she travels to markets with her husband or brother-in-law. Her son operates the shop, but she helps in periods of high demand. Although she controls the income from these businesses, day-to-day operations are handled by male members of the family. Among our subjects, Rahima seems to represent an extreme case of managerial independence. She began borrowing in 1989, after she and her children left her husband, who was physically abusive and had taken a second wife. For the past 19 years, her main business has been purchasing and renting rickshaws. Rahima has complete control of her microenterprise, making her own investment decisions, managing rentals, and controlling business income. The extent of control over loans varies across interviewees and over time. In spite of this variation, the effects of microcredit on borrowers’ lives seem remarkably similar. Borrowers and their families achieve higher levels of economic security, with advances in income, expenditure, assets, and savings. As borrowers gain economic security, they invest more in the schooling of their children, female as well as male. Borrowers and their families enjoy enhanced emotional well being. High incomes and more assets improve their ability to sustain themselves through economic and health crises as well as natural disasters.6 They also reduce conflict among family members and diminish uncertainty and anxiety about the future. The communities in which borrowers reside and do business benefit from spillovers—volunteer labor, charitable contributions in cash and kind, improved employment opportunities, and a broader range of goods and services.7 Differences in loan control are often a result of voluntary negotiations between female borrowers and their male relatives. Consider again Usha, who
6
In a cross-section study of the effects of microcredit on the emotional well-being of BRAC members, Ahmed et al. (2001, pp. 1963 – 1964) conclude that ‘women’s microcredit does little to influence favorably the emotional well-being of its recipients’ and can actually damage it. The average length of membership in their study, however, is less than two years. Many of our subjects reported heightened anxiety in the early stages of their microcredit history, which disappeared as they gained experience, economic security, and assets. 7 On the effects of microfinance on household poverty, consumption expenditure, and nonland asset holdings in Bangladesh, see Pitt & Khandker (1998) and Khandker (2003). On village-level effects of microcredit programs in Bangladesh, see Khandker et al. (1998) and Khandker (2003).
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was able to gain more control over her businesses by proving to her husband that her productive activities did not violate traditional norms of honor (shomman) or propriety (achoron). ‘I don’t do anything that harms him or makes him look bad. I always consult him before making a decision.’ Khadija, who exercises substantial control over her garment business but makes investment decisions jointly with her husband, explains that her success in controlling business operations is due to her record in advancing family wellbeing. ‘My husband thinks that he agrees with whatever I say. He understands that whatever I do is good for the family.’ Both Fatima and Sadeka have divested themselves of control, passing on their loans to be invested by their sons. They regard themselves as semi-retired, an arrangement that seems to satisfy all parties. The sons repay the loans, contribute to their mothers’ savings and pension funds, and give them periodic cash allowances. Sadeka proudly declares that her son thinks she has worked too hard for too many years: ‘My son does not let me work.’ Goetz & Sen Gupta consider other circumstances under which a woman’s loss of control over her loan does not signify a loss of power. A woman gives up control in order to acquire a more stable marriage or an improvement in health care for herself or her children. Relinquishing control may constitute a ‘viable economic and social survival strategy’ in which a woman gives her loan to male relatives and gains a guaranteed food supply or other improvements in economic security (Goetz & Sen Gupta, 1996, p. 50). Goetz & Sen Gupta’s analysis of the rural Bangladeshi household suggests that, unless its structure changes substantially, women can never fully control their loans and thus can never become empowered. They represent household production decisions as joint ventures in which male relatives—husbands, brothers, and sons—participate. Cash, especially in large amounts, is a traditional male economic resource, and its exchange in the public sphere of markets is a privileged male domain. Therefore, even if women secure loans and control productive assets, the payoffs for empowerment are modest (Goetz & Sen Gupta, 1996, p. 53). Two troubling consequences follow from the authors’ analysis of control of loan use as an element of empowerment. As they acknowledge, borrowers do not treat control of loan use as an essential condition of empowerment since they readily exchange it for social arrangements on which they place a higher premium. And even if it were an essential condition, it could not be satisfied because of the dominance of men in the monetary and public market sphere of the economy.8
8
A final anomaly in Goetz & Sen Gupta’s analysis of empowerment should be noted. In their account of the relationship between loan size and control of loan use, they consider the finding that control is generally inversely related to loan size. In the main, loss of control is correlated with increases in loan amounts (Goetz & Sen Gupta, 1996, p. 51). The more restrictive the potential for empowerment—the smaller the size of the loan— the more empowered women become. This conclusion seems paradoxical. A woman who has 100% control over a loan of 1,000 taka is more empowered than a woman who has 50% control over a loan of 10,000 taka. The more economic power in the form of cash that the woman acquires, the less empowered she becomes.
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2.2. The Dilemma of Criteria and Predictors Goetz & Sen Gupta define empowerment of women as a process that depends on their success in gaining control of productive enterprises. Hashemi, Schuler, and Riley, on the other hand, are reluctant to venture a definition. However, they offer a general analysis of empowerment that is more comprehensive than the account of Goetz & Sen Gupta. In their view, empowerment is not a process but a state or outcome, a set of conditions that women achieve as a result of their entrepreneurial efforts. They identify empowerment by reference to several variables, each of which is verifiable: mobility, economic security, ability to make major and minor purchases, participation in major household decisions, relative freedom from family domination, political and legal awareness, and political activity. Hashemi et al. designate these variables as ‘indicators’ but also as ‘dimensions’ or ‘aspects’ of empowerment (Hashemi et al., 1996, pp. 635–638). This is an unfortunate conflation. If the variables are indicators, they give evidence of empowerment. If the variables are aspects or dimensions of empowerment, they constitute empowerment: each variable is a necessary condition for empowerment, and taken together they define what it means to be empowered. The difference between indicators and aspects or dimensions, which Hashemi et al. erase, is critical. If x is an indicator of y, then y must be identifiable independent of x. In order to qualify as an indicator or predictor of y, x cannot be a property of y. Otherwise the claim that x is evidence of y would collapse into a tautology. Raindrops are not predictors of rain. They are rain. Dark clouds and thunder and lightning qualify as predictors of rain only because they do not constitute rain. Economic security can be an indicator of empowerment only if it is not a constituent of empowerment. The conflation of indicators and aspects raises a further problem for the analysis of empowerment. Hashemi et al. do not attempt to develop a set of criteria for empowerment, a task they find too ambitious in view of the problematic character of the concept. Their objective is to specify a set of behaviors, measures of which provide a ‘composite empowerment indicator’ that exhibits the extent to which women are empowered (Hashemi et al., 1996, p. 639).9 But in the absence of criteria for empowerment, how do Hashemi et al. know what their indicators show? X can serve as evidence of y only given criteria that identify y. Otherwise it is impossible to determine what x is evidence of. The variables of Hashemi et al. can be understood as evidence of empowerment only on the basis of a set of criteria for empowerment. The upshot is a dilemma. Either the variables are criteria for empowerment; in that case, they are not, as Hashemi et al. claim, indicators. Or they are indicators of empowerment; in that case, the absence of criteria for empowerment means that it is impossible to determine what they are indicators of. In either case, the result is unsatisfactory.10
9
Swain & Wallentin (2007, p. 6) argue that composite indicators are vulnerable to criticism, because they assign arbitrary weights to each component. 10 This dilemma reappears in Corsi et al. (2006). Following the course taken by Hashemi et al., they introduce seven variables of women’s empowerment, which intersect with the
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2.3. The Kabeer Fallacy Naila Kabeer has made some of the most valuable contributions to the literature on development, microcredit, and gender. In her essay on the Millennium Development Goal of gender equality and women’s empowerment (Kabeer, 2005a), she provides an analysis of empowerment that includes several essential premises. (1) Empowerment presupposes disempowerment. Actors who have been restricted in their choices become empowered when their range of choices—their ‘ability to have chosen differently’—expands. (2) Disempowered actors must have genuine alternatives; and since repressive power is exercised most effectively when its operation is invisible, actors can become empowered only if they see what their alternatives are. (3) The decisions that empower are ‘strategic life choices’—existential decisions on which all other choices depend, such as where to live, whether and whom to marry, and whether to have children. (4) Strategic life choices empower only if the exercise of one actor’s strategic life choices does not restrict the strategic life choices of other actors. (5) Finally, the strategic life choices that empower are ‘transformative’: they ‘transform power relations’ by changing the institutional conditions under which a woman acts, with the effect that the social space within which she makes her choices is reconfigured to her advantage (Kabeer, 2005a, pp. 14 –15). More formally, suppose that P designates a person, C a set of choices, and T time. P is empowered if and only if: (1) At T1, P exercises choices C but is denied choices C’, where C’ is greater than and includes C. At some later time T2, P exercises choices C’. (2) At T2, P sees that she has options C’. (3) C’ constitutes a range of ‘strategic life choices.’ (4) P’s empowerment—her exercise of C’ at T2—does not disempower any other person P’. That is, the increase in P’s strategic life choices does not diminish the strategic life choices of P’. (5) P’s exercise of C’ is ‘transformative.’ Independent of the question of how a borrower’s choices can be identified and enumerated so that differences in their number and range at two different times can be established and compared, Kabeer’s premises (4) and (5) pose problems that cannot be resolved within the limits of her analysis. Consider Khadija in 1992, shortly before she received her first Grameen loan. Her husband earned 500– 600 taka per week as a tailor and supported a household of eight members. They lived in a small house with bamboo walls and a sheet metal roof on land that the husband had inherited from his father. The husband made all family and investment decisions and exercised complete control over his income. Khadija was a housewife with no assets or income: ‘I had no
indices of Hashemi et al. but are not identical to them. What is the status of the seven variables? Corsi et al. (2006, pp. 70– 73) identify them as ‘indicators’ of empowerment and also as ‘dimensions’ and ‘aspects’ of empowerment. This conflation reproduces the problems identified in the above analysis of Hashemi et al.
190 N. Aslanbeigui et al. money, didn’t earn any, so I had no voice.’ In 1992, the power resources of the household included the husband’s income, the bari, and the authority to make intra-familial decisions. Khadija’s access to these resources was minimal. Today the family has four members and is significantly better off financially. After 16 years of taking progressively larger loans, Khadija’s garment business makes a weekly profit of more than 7,500 taka. She owns a shop, a personal savings account, three pension funds, a piece of land with a new house, and five sewing machines. Her husband, who is employed in his wife’s shop, owns the original home, now renovated, and a mobile phone. The family has an array of household goods, including a ceiling fan and a television set. Although family and investment decisions are made jointly, Khadija controls all the income. It is clear that the power resources of the household have increased substantially since 1992. It is also clear that in absolute terms, both Khadija and her husband have benefited from this development. Relatively, however, the husband’s power resources have diminished. In the language of Kabeer’s analysis, Khadija’s status in the family has been transformed as a result of her microcredit history, but at the expense of her husband, who has been disempowered. Because microcredit changes relative access to power resources, once it enters a social system, Kabeer’s condition (4) will not be met. The source of this problem is the assumption of condition (4) that empowerment is never a zero-sum process. Although this assumption is logically possible, it holds true in a regime of microcredit only on a utopian premise: no loan alters the relative strategic life choices of actors in the social system, in consequence of which microcredit has no effect on the distribution of resources for the exercise of power. This premise is also inconsistent with Kabeer’s condition (5), which requires that empowering choices alter the circumstances under which power resources are distributed. Thus, Kabeer’s analysis of empowerment is deficient on two grounds: condition (4) can be satisfied only on an Edenic premise; and given this premise, condition (5) cannot be met.11
11
In addition to the consideration that microcredit empowers one set of actors by disempowering another, strategic life choices may be constrained so that a choice by a given actor can restrict or rule out further choices on the part of the same actor. As Mayoux observes, empowerment seems to be a contradictory process in which acts of empowerment prove to be self-defeating. In the most obvious case, microcredit may increase the range of women’s choices by offering them loans but leave them worse off than they were before because they are unable to meet repayment schedules. Failed microcredit entrepreneurs can lose not only assets but reputation, which compromises their ability to acquire credit in any market (Mayoux, 1999, p. 968). Economic empowerment through microcredit may destroy dependency relations between women and landowners, traditionally the moneylenders of last resort, eliminating customary sources of critical loans (Edward & Olsen, 2006, p. 43). Evidence from Africa and Latin America shows that a woman who generates income through microcredit may lose the financial support of her husband, who may divert his income from family expenditures to gambling, alcohol, prostitutes, or luxury consumption. Under some conditions, the husband may even abandon his wife or engage in polygamy (Mayoux, 1999, pp. 972, 974; Armenda´riz & Roome, 2008, p. 12). Evidence from Bangladesh shows that microcredit can increase
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2.4. The Paradox of Agency In the literature on microcredit and gender, one of the chief objectives of empowerment is to form, sustain, and strengthen agency. In the articles we examined, agency is understood as personal autonomy: the capacity to develop independent intentions, purposes, and decisions and the disposition to act on them. Women’s agency is critical to freeing them from the mutually reinforcing constraints of patriarchy, poverty, ignorance, and lack of mobility. As Kabeer observes, empowerment often begins within, in a woman’s sense of herself as a person who makes choices in ways that challenge and transform institutional limitations on her freedom (Kabeer, 2005a, pp. 14 –15). Mahmuda understood important changes in her life history from this perspective. Before she joined the Grameen Bank 23 years ago, her family was completely dependent on the income of her husband, a day laborer. Because she made no contribution to family finances, she was shy and especially fearful over expenditures: ‘I thought I could not spend money. My husband would be angry.’ If guests arrived, she waited for her husband to return to the bari before deciding what to serve them. She did not leave the bari unescorted and regarded herself as an ‘appendage’ of someone else, lacking an identity independent of her role as a wife or a daughter-in-law. Today, she feels she has earned the freedom to make choices, venture outside the bari without male supervision, and spend money. When guests appear, she decides what to purchase and offer them. Although family and investment decisions are made jointly, she controls her income and her husband’s as well. Mahmuda characterizes the fundamental difference between her pre- and post-Grameen identities in the following terms: ‘Before [the loans] I was the wife. Now I am the boss.’ However, the literature we consider also suggests, paradoxically, that this sense of agency—the subjective dimension of empowerment—is an illusion. It views women in developing economies as dependent on the strategies of development theorists and planners. The empowered woman is conceived as a construct, an artifact of specialists in women and development—chiefly academics trained in western universities, NGO officials, and state policy makers on gender matters. Agency as realized in empowerment is a product of the microsocial structures of order created by these specialists and the organizations they represent. Women may work to become empowered, but only in a social framework in which they are worked upon by experts who reform and engineer their identities. Empowerment, therefore, is mainly a consequence of what is done to women as opposed to what they do on their own behalf. Agency is determined principally by organizational socialization processes in which development experts are the masters.
the incidence of domestic violence against women by male family members. A borrower may be unable to cook her husband’s meals on time because a center meeting is delayed. She may refuse to transfer her loan to her husband or agree to the transfer but challenge her husband’s use of the loan. Under these circumstances, tension within the household escalates, leading to verbal aggression or physical violence against women (Rahman, 1999, pp. 123 – 126). In all these instances, empowerment paradoxically disempowers.
192 N. Aslanbeigui et al. The institutional formation of women’s agency is especially clear in the policies and operations of microcredit institutions such as the Grameen Bank. Consider the distinctive village banking rituals that it imposes on borrowers: group meetings; collective recitation of the now famous ‘sixteen decisions’ (Grameen Bank, 2008b), which have the objective of rationalizing the character of borrowers in directions that conform to bank policies; the salute that marks the identity of Grameen members; and weekly installment payments, delivered in meetings attended by members of several groups. These routines define the subjectivity of the Grameen borrower, whose agency is formed by the bank’s strategies of development. The main determinant of the character of the borrower is the business model of the bank: progressively larger loans and investments to improve family income, consumption, health, and education; peer surveillance to maintain discipline; community involvement; and a commitment on the part of members to a life of hard work, frugality, cleanliness, personal responsibility, courage, and trustworthiness—virtues that are held to liberate Bangladeshi women from poverty and oppression (Grameen Bank, 2008b). Hashemi et al. stress the regimented and ritualized features of Grameen socialization mechanisms. Not only do members salute at weekly meetings, but they sit in rows on the dirt floor of the village bank center, chant slogans, perform physical exercises in concert, and address officials of the bank (typically men) as ‘Sir,’ ‘The Sirs,’ or ‘The Bank Sirs.’ These rituals ‘plainly cast them [the members] in a subservient role.’ Bank rituals form the agency of Grameen borrowers on the basis of disciplined obedience and deference to bank officials and careful adherence to the Bank’s economic and human relations policies. The women of Grameen are subordinated to male bank officials, methodically regulated by the socialization processes of the bank, and incorporated into the public socioeconomic hierarchy of Bangladeshi society at its bottom. And yet Hashemi et al. note that the intention of this mode of agency construction is a set of ‘styles of behavior’ designed to empower rural women (Hashemi et al., 1996, p. 649). Changes in the lives of the subjects of our interviews document the extent to which their identities—not only the styles, but the basic premises of their conduct—are anchored in the priorities of the Grameen Bank. Although we asked borrowers no questions about the 16 decisions, their responses to questions we did pose reproduced the logic and rhetoric of Grameen discourse, at times even repeating the language of Bank policies. Concerning progressive borrowing and investment, each borrower had at least one loan for every year of membership, and the majority had progressed to larger numbers. (Mandira, a member of the Bank for 23 years, had taken 46 loans.) All borrowers started with small loans of 1,000– 3,000 taka—approximately US$15 –45 at the current exchange rate—for projects intended to achieve immediate cash flow: unhusked rice that could be processed to make puffed rice, livestock that could produce milk, poultry that could lay eggs, and rickshaws that could be rented. In a few years, larger loans supported acquisitions of increasingly valuable assets: mobile phones, sewing machines, household appliances, land, and houses. The largest loan recorded by an interviewee was 400,000 taka, but loans of 100,000 to 200,000 taka were common in later stages of Bank membership. As regards housing, food, cleanliness, and health,
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all borrowers had built Grameen-style houses with sanitary latrines and tubewells. Some had brick houses under construction. Many grew their own rice and vegetables, and those who did not were prosperous enough to buy their food on the market. Although our research was carried out in the Bangladeshi dry season, when virtually everything was covered with a thick layer of dust, the living quarters of our interviewees were remarkably clean, as were the borrowers themselves, their children, and grandchildren. Perhaps these factors explain why only a few borrowers or their family members had healthcare expenses. Those who needed medical attention spent regularly on chronic problems such as high blood pressure, gastritis, arthritis, and kidney disease.12 Although it is not clear whether the Grameen succeeded in training our subjects in family planning, the majority practiced it after receiving their loans.13 Schooling of children was determined by the success of microcredit ventures. Prior to membership or in the early stages of borrowing, female children married young, and neither boys nor girls received much schooling. When families no longer lived in poverty, children—both female and male—received much higher levels of schooling. Several children of borrowers, again both female and male, had either received a baccalaureate degree or were working toward one at the university. Usha wants her daughters, who are studying at the university, to become teachers or college professors. Minothi hopes that her son, who has an associate’s degree in textile engineering, will complete his studies in engineering at the university. Her daughter, who was in fifth grade, received government scholarships because she was first in her class, and Minothi hopes to see her become a physician. Rahima’s advice to her children is not to ‘lose the momentum’ she had achieved in upward economic mobility. All interviewees exhibited the Grameen ethic of hard work, discipline, frugality, and courage—the readiness to assume risks in initiating business ventures that promise to transform their lives. Rahima refuses to buy more than two saris a year, the same number she had before joining the Bank. ‘I am not a big spender and am very careful with money.’ Most subjects reported that they work extremely long hours. Usha works harder now than she did before becoming a Grameen member and is not comfortable taking days off. Before her Gameen membership, she did not have money to eat three meals a day. Today she is so busy that she skips meals. Rashida believes that Grameen gave her ‘courage’ to embark on new enterprises: ‘This is why you [the interviewers] are here. I am talking to you.’ Before her first loan, Selina claimed, she was worried because she did not have ‘courage.’ That worry has disappeared. Today, she has bank loans, a business, and ‘courage.’14
12
See Todd (1996), whose study of two Grameen villages produces similar results for borrowers with a credit history of ten years. See also Kabeer (2001). 13 On the effects of microcredit programs on contraceptive use and fertility in Bangladesh, see Schuler & Hashemi (1994) and Amin et al. (1994). 14 The above account covers 10 of the 16 decisions. As we will see below, the results of our interviews on questions of dowry are mixed. Borrowers provided little information on other decisions: planting trees in the appropriate seasons, peer surveillance with a view to imposing discipline and maintaining order and justice, and collective action.
194 N. Aslanbeigui et al. Goetz & Sen Gupta argue that the social identities of rural Bangladeshi women can be reconstituted to enable them to control loan use. This can be achieved only through initiatives in ‘social engineering’ that require ‘penetrating the household to tackle gender power relations’ (Goetz & Sen Gupta, 1996, p. 56). In order to succeed, members of microcredit programs need training in ‘human resource development which can enhance loan use as well as household wellbeing and structural change at the local level.’ Goetz & Sen Gupta also stress the importance of ‘supplementary services to bolster leadership and social development’ and ‘awareness-raising and functional education’ in forming the skills of women entrepreneurs (Goetz & Sen Gupta, 1996, p. 56). In their view, the exclusion of Bangladeshi women from public market places is perhaps the most significant obstacle limiting their economic productivity. Without access to the market, women cannot make accurate judgments of market demand or grasp new opportunities for investment.15 Gaining access to markets is a method of creating the autonomy on which women’s agency depends. However, any attempt to open rural markets in Bangladesh to women is likely to spark resistance from men. As a result, ‘considerable investment in support systems,’ including transportation and ‘security measures to protect women from physical assault,’ are necessary. Women can gain entry to rural markets, where they appear and work independently of male relatives, only by breaking down the traditional ethical and ritual constraints of purdah. Thus, women’s independence depends on a reconceptualization of female agency, a redefinition of what it means to be a woman. As Goetz & Sen Gupta note, a change of this magnitude depends on enlightened policies of banks and NGOs and the coercive police powers of the state. The same point—the dependence of women’s agency on state intervention—holds for Goetz & Sen Gupta’s discussion of an array of other conditions for the possibility of women’s agency, including ‘continuous investment in literacy and numeracy training’ and investment to change the thinking of both men and women regarding women’s rights over their productive resources and labor skills. The authors envision sweeping political reforms that would guarantee women’s rights of ownership and inheritance (Goetz & Sen Gupta, 1996, p. 59). Goetz & Sen Gupta seem to perceive the paradox entailed by this position. On the one hand, agency is possible only on the grounds of choices that are 15
Our research does not confirm the position of Goetz & Sen Gupta on the limitations that women’s restricted participation in public markets place on their knowledge of business opportunities. Rahima claimed that her businesses—buying livestock and renting her rickshaws and house—were based on her own thinking. Selina developed her concept of an Indonesian glass business by observing another person engaged in the same trade. She conducted her own research on where to buy and sell. Several borrowers—Rashida, Usha, Fatima, Selina, and Rahima—learned about business opportunities in conversation with other members of the Bank or Bank officers. Some receive advice from male family members. While doing business in the market, Rashida’s husband is attentive to tips about pieces of land that may be for sale. He shares this information with his wife, who makes the buying decisions. Khadija’s garment business had its origins in training provided by her husband. Finally, Fatima keeps abreast of new possibilities for business ventures by talking with her sons.
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formed autonomously. On the other hand, the obstacles in the path of autonomy for Bangladeshi women ‘require state-level responses.’ The result? ‘Policy efforts to enhance women’s loan control may run the risk of introducing a degree of organizational control and surveillance over women’s loan investment decisions which unacceptably undermine women’s autonomy in decision making over loan use’ (Goetz & Sen Gupta, 1996, p. 59). Stated more generally, the institutional requirements of empowerment—intervention by academic experts, NGOs, and agencies of the state—nullify autonomy, the fundamental requirement of agency on which empowerment is based. Subjectively, empowerment is possible only on the basis of agency. Sociologically, empowerment is possible only on the basis of institutional prerequisites that rule out agency.
2.5. Macrosocial Inertia or Institutional Flexibility? In the literature on gender and development, empowerment depends on tectonic shifts in institutions that have proven to be impervious to programmatic interventions. Put another way, empowerment requires long-term macrosocial changes that will transform traditions governing gender relations. Goetz (1992, p. 12) has observed that rural Bangladeshi women are enmeshed in social relations of patrimonial domination that are ‘among the least negotiable in the world.’ Kabeer notes that the monetization of the Bangladeshi economy has not substantially altered an inequitable gendered division of economic labor that has persisted for centuries and remains entrenched. Monetization has opened up new opportunities for men, whose ability to exploit them is limited mainly by their social status and educational accomplishments. Not so for women, who remain ‘largely confined to the precincts of their homesteads, disadvantaged in access to education and other market-related credentials and dependent on male members of their family for provision and protection’ (Kabeer, 1998, p. 32). Following the line generally taken by students of gender and development in Bangladesh, Kabeer considers the historical inertia of two durable and relatively intractable institutions that determine socioeconomic life chances of women: patriarchy—the ensemble of power relations, norms, and rituals that undergird male domination of women in all spheres of life; and purdah—the concealment and seclusion of women and their exclusion from public activity. In discussing the force of patriarchy and its resistance to modernization, Kabeer considers the sense in which land in Bangladesh remains a distinctively male asset. Although Islamic jurisprudence grants women one-half of the share of land inherited by their brothers, Bangladeshi women typically do not exercise this entitlement. Because the collapse of a marriage can impoverish a woman, she customarily waives her right to inherited land in favor of her brothers in order to gain their protection in the event of her divorce (Kabeer, 1998, pp. 55–56). The legal registration of a valuable asset such as land is conventionally made in the name of the principal male member of a household even if it was acquired by a female member through a loan. This practice conforms to Bangladeshi traditions regulating distribution of power in the household, reproducing ‘gender asymmetries in opportunities and constraints.’ Exceptions to customary male registration of assets acquired by women also follow tradition. Poultry and small livestock
196 N. Aslanbeigui et al. such as goats are conceived as women’s property. Because petty assets are regarded as the province of women, their acquisition under a woman’s name is not perceived as a violation of the standards of patriarchy (Kabeer, 1998, pp. 58– 60). In stressing the durability of centuries of purdah restrictions in Bangladesh, Kabeer comments on how purdah norms may necessitate a choice between autonomy and propriety. Mobility as expressed by buying and selling goods in the bazaar is proof of independence but also a mark of status dishonor (oshommon) and shame (lojja). In consequence, women of higher rank demonstrate their respectability by adhering to rules of exclusion, at the same time differentiating themselves from poorer women who are deprived of the choice between freedom in the market place and seclusion in the homestead.16 The only option for lower class women may be the brutal economic choice between starving in seclusion and trading in the bazaar (Kabeer, 1998, pp. 64 –70). As Kabeer summarizes the strength of purdah traditions, Bangladeshi women follow rules of purdah when they have the resources to do so, ‘both to signal their enhanced social standing within their community and to differentiate themselves from lower-status women who do not have this choice’ (Kabeer, 1998, p. 70, emphasis in original; see also p. 82).17 Thus empowerment presupposes fundamental changes in legal, political, economic, and religious structures that have been in place for centuries. Changes of this magnitude cannot be expected over a short period. It follows that empirical work on the effects of microcredit on the empowerment of women should cover a long term. Surprisingly, the studies examined in this essay consider only a few years of data. This research strategy ignores macrosocial inertia and assumes maximum institutional flexibility: large-scale social changes can be plausibly understood as short-term phenomena. What is the duration of microcredit membership in the papers that we consider?18 Goetz & Sen Gupta (1996, pp. 47, 62) base their conclusions on fieldwork conducted in Bangladesh between February and October 1993. They target microcredit participants in four programs—BRAC, Grameen, RD-12, and TMSS—and collect 275 loan histories, recording information on who invested the loans, procured inputs, and priced and marketed outputs (Goetz & Sen Gupta, 1996, p. 480). 16
Although the institution of purdah restricts the mobility of women, it is ‘less a rigid set of rules than a mindset open to interpretation’ (Todd, 1996, p. 5; also see Bornstein, 1996, p. 143 and Kabeer, 2001, p. 69). Our interviewees seemed at ease with the male members of our team, including Grameen officers from headquarter and branch offices, the bank officer who collected their weekly installments, and our interpreter. They also reported that they were quite comfortable moving outside their baris. As noted above, Selina helps her son sell cosmetics and mobile phones at their shop in periods of high demand. She justifies the apparent violation of the purdah norm by insisting that she works for herself in her own socioeconomic space: ‘It is my own shop.’ 17 On the assumption that empowerment requires fundamental shifts in basic institutions that resist change, see also Kabeer (2001, p. 83; 2005a, p. 23); Mayoux (1999, p. 978); and Goetz & Sen Gupta (1996, p. 59). 18 On the importance of duration of membership, see Chowdhury et al. (2005).
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At the time of their study, BRAC existed for seven years, RD-12 for five, Grameen for ten, and the majority of TMSS microcredit activity for two years. This means that the oldest borrower could not have been a member for more than ten years. Membership duration for a significant majority of borrowers—76.2%—ranged between less than one year to five years.19 Hashemi et al. combined quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection. In their quantitative work, they surveyed 1,300 Bangladeshi microcredit borrowers and non-borrowers who were below the age of 50 in 1992. The average duration of membership was 3.9 years for Grameen members and 3.7 years for BRAC members, with standard deviations of 2.4 and 1.7 respectively (Hashemi et al., 1996, p. 640). In their ethnographic work, they made monthly observations of 60 borrowers over a period of one year. The longest membership duration among those observed was eight years (Hashemi et al., 1996, p. 647). Kabeer’s (2005a) analysis is based on fieldwork performed in Bangladesh in early 1997. In the first phase of her study, she administered a short questionnaire to a cross-section of 696 borrowers participating in the Small Enterprise Development Project (SEDP), collecting information on demographics, loan use, and impact of microcredit. The second phase included interviews with a subset of 70 borrowers, who were asked to evaluate the effects of loans on their lives (Kabeer, 1998, pp. 19– 20). Since the earliest component of SEDP was established in Bangladesh in 1990 and the interviews were conducted in early 1997, the membership duration in Kabeer’s study cannot extend beyond seven years. In the articles under examination, no borrower had a loan record that extended beyond ten years, and many had been members of microcredit organizations for no more than five years. Yet the authors assume that empowerment is a long-term project. Microcredit programs confront formidable obstacles in the power and legitimacy of institutional traditions such as patriarchy and purdah. Fundamental changes cannot be anticipated in a few years. It follows that the macrosociology and the historiography underpinning these studies of microcredit and empowerment are inconsistent with their short-term research strategies. In general, evaluations of microcredit rely heavily on cross-section data. The studies of Goetz & Sen Gupta and Hashemi et al. are not exceptions. Based on differences in degrees of empowerment observed in a number of borrowers at a particular point in time, they make inferences about empowerment gains of individual borrowers over their lifetimes. However, the life histories that emerge from these studies are statistical constructs that depend on the characteristics of borrowers who happen to be included in the sample. Not surprisingly, cross-section investigations of the same question often vary significantly in their conclusions and sometimes arrive at mutually inconsistent results. They are also ahistorical. Statistical constructions of actors and their behavior produced by cross-section methods are not narratives that identify the expressed intentions of real historical
19
Information on BRAC and Grameen was obtained from their Websites. Information on TMSS (Thengamara Mohila Sabuj Sangha) was received in correspondence with the organization on July 4, 2008. On Bangladesh Rural Development Board Rural Development RD-12, see Jackson & Brodhead (2004).
198 N. Aslanbeigui et al. actors and connect these intentions to their conduct, the consequences that follow from the actions they perform, and the bearing of these consequences on their subsequent intentions.20 Although cross-section studies suggest a sense of change in the life of an average borrower from earlier to later years of her membership in a microcredit program, the absence of a narrative account of action makes it impossible to grasp sequences of events and the irrevocability of historical changes.21 Focusing on the life histories of borrowers has three important methodological advantages. It considers credit histories over a long period, emphasizing changes in the lives of borrowers in historical time. It ignores ephemeral and inconsequential changes in their lives, concentrating instead on generational and inter-generational movements. The generational and inter-generational perspective conforms to the views of borrowers, who consistently assess microcredit by reference to its impact on the family unit and not their individual welfare. Finally, it captures significant and irreversible changes in traditional gender relations, a fundamental barrier to the success of poor women in Bangladesh. Our subjects had borrowing histories from 16 to 23 years. Without exception, they saw their long-term economic success, which was achieved by cash income based on loans, as the factor that produced the most significant changes in their lives. With the help of Grameen loans, all our interviewees had acquired a house, the land on which it was built (a requirement for Grameen house loans), businesses, livestock, and poultry. Over many years, they had accumulated other sizable assets. Several borrowers had acquired additional pieces of land. Rashida owned one acre, a significant parcel in view of the small size and large population of the country. Fatima owned land reported to be worth 10,000,000 taka. Five borrowers owned an additional house, and Fatima and Minothi were in the course of erecting third structures, in both cases a brick building of several stories.
20
Because cross-section analyses cannot control for factors that can bias their results, they are open to a number of other criticisms. For example, borrowers may belong to microcredit programs that are not distributed randomly over various locations, or they may have joined through a self-selection process. In addition, factors such as innate ability or entrepreneurial spirit may not be observable or quantifiable (see Armenda´riz & Morduch, 2005, pp. 199 – 224; Chowdhury et al., 2005, p. 308; McKernan, 2002; Pitt & Khandker, 1998; Sharma & Zeller, 1999). Although studies based on carefully collected panel data can remedy some of these biases (Armenda´riz & Morduch, 2005, pp. 210– 222; Khandker, 2003, p. 7), they are expensive and rarely performed. To date, panel data research on microcredit has been limited to short periods. See, for example, Coleman’s (1999) quasi-experimental study, which is based on data from two microfinance programs in northeast Thailand; participants were interviewed four times in 1995– 96. Khandker’s (2003) study of microfinance participants in Bangladesh is based on panel data provided by the World Bank and the Bangladesh Institute for Development Studies, which were compiled in 1991– 1992 and 1998 – 1999 and cover changes over a seven-year period; the study is silent on duration of borrower membership. 21 On the irrevocability of change in historical time see Setterfield (1995). There is an extensive literature on the epistemological and ontological dependence of history on narrative. Perhaps the most influential and useful source is Danto (2007).
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Cash income and wealth accumulated over decades of borrowing are tightly linked to status in the household and community as well as mobility beyond the bari. Commenting on gender relations in her household before she began borrowing, Rashida maintains that, due to her poverty, her domestic standing did not match that of her husband. Because of her poverty, she was reluctant to leave her bari. Today, she enjoys a social position higher than her husband’s. She attributes this to her control over money and the necessities of life and her consequent power to manage the affairs of her household. As a result, she enjoys the respect of her fellow villagers, who take her views seriously. She no longer feels uncomfortable moving about alone. Because of her elevated social status, she can ask a woman from another bari to accompany her on local excursions without fearing that the woman’s family will refuse. Minothi explains her earlier insignificance in her household by reference to economic factors. She had no earning power, and her husband was responsible for all their cash income. As a result, she had little autonomy and no respect in her community. Today, she believes she has achieved a social position higher than her husband’s, a change that is due to her Grameen loans. Her autonomy and reputation in the community have improved as well. Minothi’s explanation: ‘Money brings respect.’ Selina interprets her former menial position along the same lines. She understood that in order to gain a ‘voice’ in the household and the village, she needed to acquire earning power. Shy, in want of many things, and reluctant to leave her bari, her earlier economic and social existence was dismal: ‘If you don’t have money, there is no respect.’ Because she can take loans, earn money, and invest it, her social standing has advanced considerably. Now people respect her and see her as a leader. As Selina puts it, if she tells ten people to do something, nine will follow her. Mobility outside the bari is no longer a problem: ‘If other people can move, so can I. Because I am no longer poor, I am not self-conscious. I can blend in.’ Before Sadeka began borrowing from Grameen, she was a divorced day laborer, digging soil and enmeshed in the social and moral economy of poverty. Members of her community treated her with indifference or contempt. No one spoke to her or cared for her needs. Her children were unacceptable as hired help. Not even her brothers attended to her most basic nutritional needs, and on one occasion she did not eat for three days. Today, her miseries have ended, and she is a valued member of her community. Why? In Sadeka’s view, the answer lies in her wealth and possessions, which include a house, a television, and several mobile phones. She is invited to social functions because of her prestige in the village, which she certifies by liberal donations of 10,000 to 15,000 taka to the mosque. Khadija also saw her unhappy pre-Grameen life as a consequence of her lack of earning power. Because of her poverty, she did not speak with her neighbors or visit their houses. Diffident and withdrawn because she could not afford socially acceptable clothing, she was largely confined to her bari. Today, members of her community seek her companionship and influence: ‘I can lend them money.’ Now, when she no longer needs them, she has offers of loans from her neighbors. Have the generational effects of microcredit affected women’s views on gender equality and dowry? Our interviewees exhibit a shift of positions in the direction of more egalitarian views on the relations between men and women.
200 N. Aslanbeigui et al. However, their commitment to dowry is more resistant to change—this in spite of the fact that refusal to give or receive dowry is one of the 16 Grameen decisions and is frequently recited by borrowers. These findings seem paradoxical. If women regard men as their equals, it seems that this position would encourage them to repudiate the practice of dowry. In the main, although not without exceptions, our interviews document the former position but not the latter. Because of her many years of membership in the Grameen Bank, Rashida believes she has achieved financial independence. As she puts it, she does not ‘have to depend on a man.’ Yet she is not against dowry. Although she did not pay dowry when her daughter married, her motives were instrumental, based on utilitarian calculations by the families on both sides of the marriage. Rashida’s daughter had earned a baccalaureate degree. The family of the husband, who held a master’s degree, regarded her as an attractive investment. Rashida did not pay dowry because the circumstances of her daughter’s marriage did not require it. Because of the human capital her daughter brought to the marriage, the son-in-law’s family paid Rashida 30,000 taka, a socially acceptable and expected means of persuading her to grant her daughter permission to move to Dhaka, about an hour from Rashida’s village. Patriarchal norms have prevailed both in the marriage and in the relative values Rashida ascribed to the married couple. The husband withdrew his wife from law school in order to avoid the possibility of competition with his brother, who is a lawyer. Rashida’s daughter is now enrolled in a different master’s program, and Rashida raises their three year-old son, allowing her daughter to work for BRAC and finish her education. The couple sends her money for clothes and oil for her hair; Rashida praises her son-in-law but not her daughter. Mandira, who does not share Rashida’s professed views on the equality of women, had both paid and received dowry. Her daughters had no formal schooling and were married in their teens. The oldest daughter, who married at 13, brought a pair of gold earrings and 1,500 taka as dowry. The middle daughter, who married at 14, had ten grams of gold and 8,000 taka. By the time her oldest daughter married at 15, Mandira was more prosperous and could pay 30 grams of gold and 15,000 taka. More recently, her son, a university student, married a young woman who had completed secondary school. Mandira received a dowry of 100,000 taka as well as 50 grams of gold from the family. Usha claims that prior to her experience in the Grameen Bank, she had never considered gender issues. Because of her experience, she now sees girls and boys as equals. She also connects enlightened views on gender with business acumen. ‘If I had this idea [of gender equality], I would have been able to own a big piece of land, seventy to eighty decimals. Land is a very good investment. Eighteen years ago, a twenty-decimal parcel of land cost 25 taka. Now it is 5,000,000 taka.’ Despite these views, Usha paid dowry to her son-in-law’s family: 60,000 taka in addition to furniture and a television that cost 50,000 taka. Sadeka notes that she has always considered men and women as equals: ‘If they can work, why shouldn’t we?’ However, her views on dowry have changed, which she attributes to her Grameen membership. Her daughter did not marry with dowry, nor did Sadeka take dowry from the family of her daughter-in-law, whose mother is also a Grameen member. Selina maintains that before she took loans from the
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Grameen Bank, she gave no thought to questions of gender. That has changed, she claims, because Grameen women have ‘gained their status.’ Her son was expected to marry some five months after our interviews, and she declared that she did not expect dowry from the family of her future daughter-in-law. ‘Why would I take dowry? I don’t like to attend weddings where dowry is involved. I am small but intelligent. I got that from Dr. Yunus.’ Khadija had vague ideas about gender equality before receiving Grameen loans, but these ideas played no part in her life. Now she enjoys a position equal to her husband’s: ‘What is wrong with equality? I control everything now, but we are equal.’ When her daughter married a computer engineer after finishing secondary school, she spent 150,000 taka on the wedding but paid no dowry to the husband’s family. Rahima provides the most interestingly complex set of observations concerning gender relations. Before her Grameen membership, she did not regard boys and girls as equals. Now she says that she does: ‘That [a commitment to gender equality] is why women are more powerful now.’ However, she also claims that she dislikes ‘this gender equality thing.’ Why is gender equality objectionable? ‘I care about purdah. Girls should be friendly with everyone and respect elders.’ Although adherence to the rituals of purdah is important to Rahima, she does not take the same view of dowry. The family of her daughter-in-law, who had no schooling, did not pay her dowry. Nor did she pay dowry on behalf of her daughter, who had seven years of schooling and married a man with a baccalaureate degree; but she did give her daughter 15 grams of gold on her marriage. Rahima believes in gender equality but does not approve of it because it encourages women to violate purdah—the Bangladeshi institution that embeds gender inequality most visibly and systematically. She neither took nor received dowry but endowed her daughter with gold on her marriage. Taken together, do these positions make sense? They do to Rahima, and she betrays no lack of confidence in interviews. In sum, the stories told by our subjects on issues of gender equality and dowry are decidedly mixed, suggesting that investigations are not likely to discover uniformity and consistency in the fluid contemporary culture of Bangladeshi gender relations. In consequence, the project of developing generalizations concerning the character and pace of change in the institutions of patriarchy and purdah is likely to be perilous.
3. Conclusion By way of conclusion, four points are pertinent. First, the problems generated by the concept of empowerment suggest that it is not a viable candidate for assessing microcredit programs. Our critique indicates that in evaluating the benefits of microcredit for women, researchers should look elsewhere. Second, the ultimate goal of microcredit is to advance the process of development by ‘fighting poverty’ and changing ‘the quality of life of the poor people’ (Grameen Bank, 2008a; BRAC, 2008). Since a disproportionate share of the poor is female, this goal cannot be achieved without changing ancient customs and institutions that govern gender relations, such as patriarchy and purdah.
202 N. Aslanbeigui et al. Third, in determining whether microcredit achieves the above goal, it is futile to target short-term changes in the lives of borrowers. Although evaluations of microcredit based on empowerment acknowledge this point, they generally examine short-term results. Our research suggests that in assessing the impact of microcredit, it is essential to consider generational and inter-generational differences in the lives of borrowers and their families. Finally, if macrosocial change cannot be expected in the short term, what are the consequences for the analysis of the effects of microcredit on institutions? Again, we suggest taking a longer perspective by examining the place of microcredit in the life histories of borrowers and their families. Such an approach demonstrates that institutional transformation is a much more complex matter than the literature on microcredit and development generally supposes. A consideration of generational and intergenerational effects of microcredit opens up several possibilities. In some cases, initiatives taken by microcredit organizations or by the borrowers themselves may substantially weaken institutions. There may be little or no discernable change in institutional structures over five to ten years; in the long term, however, changes in women’s economic behavior alter institutions at the margins or from within (see Todd, 1996, p. 181). These changes can produce additional differences in the way women conduct their lives and how institutions function. In other cases, life histories may show that certain properties of institutions remain relatively inflexible at the same time that others are recast. There is no seismic shift or transformation but a contingent set of adjustments in beliefs and practices that do not follow a uniform or consistent pattern.
Acknowledgments The authors thank Monmouth University for several sources of funding: a grantin-aid-for creativity, the research budget of the Jack T. Kvernland Chair, and Leon Hess Business School. The authors are grateful to Mrs Jannat E. Quanine and Mr Mosleh Uddin of the Grameen Bank for facilitating their research. Gerhard Wagner, Veronica Montecinos, and Michele Naples provided helpful commentary. For research assistance, the authors thank Andre Renaudo and Mary-Ann Guyler. An earlier version of this paper received the 2009 KPMG Best Paper Award of the Gender Issues/Work-life Balance Section of the American Accounting Association.
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