So this one day, on social media, I am listening to a man explain how microloan schemes are ruining marriages and making women crazy because they do not know how to handle money.
I politely asked if they were referring to the microloan schemes based on Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel Prize with his Grameen Bank and leaning into microloans and microfinance, and the misapplication and corruption of these concepts in the Tanzanian context.
I was just as politely told to be quiet because, as a woman, I did not have the clarity of thought required to understand the rules and regulations of something as complex as financial management for a household. You have to love being a woman online.
I let it go because the irony was enough to drive a smelter for days. But the encounter did make me think a bit about Yunus’ concern for the unbanked and the unbankable. As ever, women are champions at losing out on opportunities for access to money.
Thinking of what I have observed growing up, my own experiences and most of all women whom I know are investing through saccos and clubs, I realised that if I cared for lucre I would probably run a bank exclusively for the needs of women: From microloans to Islamic banking services, to other products that this particular clientele would benefit from.
Poverty wears a woman’s face in Tanzania, and a young face too. But, while people grow older, women tend to remain women. From control of salaries to domestic abuse, to the assumption that it is a man’s job to take care of you — which sounds “nice” until you consider the elements of control and ownership embedded in there, the situation isn’t great.
Widowhood is a straight-up tragedy, as can be divorce. As for the labour market, yes, it is opening up considerably to women who manage to go to school and get professions. Otherwise, of course, agriculture and other high-intensity low-income work is the norm.
And, yet, if you ever tell me to lend someone money or trust them with my savings, I can only think of perhaps one man as opposed to dozens of “sistren” out there to lean into. This because of a lifetime of unwelcome advice from almost all the men I have in my life, some of whom like to call me naïve because of my aversion to money. I simply tell them that I have almost failed every economics class I have ever taken — a stubborn rejection of Rational Man and other Dead White Dude nonsense that takes more courage than one might think. It works to soothe them and quiet them.
The problem of microloans in Tanzania is a real one for many women. Basic financial illiteracy and an unfamiliarity with the concept of interest has put quite a few women in the hole. Women who otherwise run households on a dollar a day, willpower and cunning. The problem, above all else, is the fundamental one we struggle with, and will for a long time: Education, knowledge. Given to women as their human right. Economic justice.
I think Yunus would get it, even if my fellow countrymen clearly do not want to. But, as with all things, it will come with time.
Elsie Eyakuze is an independent consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report; Email [email protected]
Source: The East African
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