The right to work...continued

Microcredit has received increased attention in recent years. Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi banker and economist, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for his groundbreaking success at implementing microcredit programs to improve the lives of the poorest of the poor in his country. It’s a success that Bangladesh desperately needs: more than 100 million Bangladeshis live on $2 or less a day.
“Microcredit allows them to make $3-5 a day,” says Cal Schultz, an insurance broker and member of Empower Microcredit Enterprise Development (MED), a microcredit program in Bangladesh. “They don’t have to sell their sons or daughters into bonded slavery to take out a loan.”
But since the global economic crisis, the number of the world’s poor has passed the one billion mark – and an estimated 70 percent are women. “Historically, economic recessions have placed a disproportionate burden on women,” says Sha Zukang, UN under-secretary general for Economic and Social Affairs. “Women are more likely than men to be in vulnerable jobs, to be under-employed or without a job, to lack social protection, and to have limited access to and control over economic and financial resources.”
Interestingly, it is women who most often receive microcredit loans. “Women get the loans because when you’re dealing at $1 a day, it is the women that are usually taking the responsibility to care for the home,” says Kurt Frers, of Empower MED/OMS Canada.
With the exception of farming, men tend to have business ideas that are more difficult to implement, explains Frers, while women think in terms of how to earn money to best meet the family’s needs. And when women are in a position of controlling money and a business, they achieve greater equality within their own homes and among the members of their community.
Hasina bought and planted six coconut plants after borrowing 200 taka (about $3) through her savings group. “I thought that coconut was good to plant, because the milk is a medicine, you can eat it, the leaves are useful and it’s easy to grow,” she explains. It was eight long years before the first fruits appeared, but one tree yielded enough seed to grow three more trees – and her business.
“There have been lots of changes (since we first planted) – lots!” she continues. “And I’d never got out before; I had no self confidence. I was shy and afraid to speak up. But now, that’s changing. I have courage to talk and speak my mind. I have a voice. I’m even the chairperson of my group.”

Nurturing their talents
In the capital city of Dhaka, Aklima attended her savings group for nearly a year before telling her husband.
“When I joined, the group was collecting 5Tk a week in savings. Sometimes I didn’t eat, saving 1-2Tk per week to attend,” she says. “I was afraid my husband would find out and say, ‘You don’t need any money from me if you are giving away that much each week.’”
But Aklima found a clever way to solve her problem. “I borrowed 25,000Tk ($350) from my women’s group and got a job for him with the city as a cleaner,” she says wryly. (Municipal jobs in Dhaka, such as street cleaning, require the applicant to pay a fee to be hired.) “My husband couldn’t ignore how my joining the group helped our family.”
Soon Aklima’s husband had joined a men’s group to learn about saving money and gender equality. “There was a real change in his attitude,” she recalls. “The justice training in his group made him more sensitive to my needs. We didn’t fight so much, and he started to understand my point of view.”
“It’s not enough to say, ‘I let my wife go to group, and I send both my son and my daughter to school,’” says Kohima Daring, country con-sultant for the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee (CRWRC) in Bangladesh. “We like to challenge the group to think more deeply about the issues and to encourage men and women to be advocates for women’s rights within their own communities.”
And a woman’s right to earn an income is a right that promises hope for the next generation: “I made many mistakes,” Alkima says. “But my daughter will have a different life. She can wait to marry; it’s okay! Her husband will be a good man, and she will be educated. This is my dream for my daughter.”

Stephanie Tombari is a freelance writer from Burlington, Ontario