ANÁLISIS DE LAS OBSERVACIONES NECESARIAS PARA

One of the most important dimensions and indicators of empowerment is the liberty and autonomy of women exercised in different spheres through the actions and interactions, which enables them to have developed their agency for the alteration of their lives. Bangladeshi society and culture has given men and women different outlooks towards life that stimulate them to determine their life choices as per their own knowledge and understanding. Thus, male attitudes towards females has negatively contributed to the sharp distinctions between male and female in terms of a value judgment, which justifies their stanch position with regard to the issue of their lives. I have found in the study areas that women cannot make decisions for the family and cannot do anything without first consulting with their husbands, implying that women’s decisions in family affairs are not recognized or valued. In this regard an argument of Westergaard (1983, cited in Naz, 2006) can be presented here, where “there is lack of decision making power and control on the part of the women over the economic life of a rural family because it is men who control the means of production” (p.83).

One day I had an interview with a client of Grameen Bank named Pairun (age 36). Her husband was sitting beside her. He wanted to share his opinion with me concerning who should make the decisions in the household. In his view, “women should not have the right to take decision.

Women have no practical knowledge; they do not know the social reality that they [men] face and try to tackle. Have you ever seen any woman who can do her job nicely?” Such perceptions of women by men in rural Bangladeshi society are common. Women themselves have also not developed their own ideas about freedom and autonomy due to the cultural constructs and practices that contribute to gender stereotypes amongst women themselves. If autonomy is identified with individual independence, the self-determination of individual women, and the right to individual choice (Mies, 2014), there appears to be a lack of these components in the rural context of the study areas. Some of the women also do not desire freedom, for their mindset has been culturally constructed and developed in such a way that they cannot choose to be as free as their male counterparts. I present the views of a respondents under BRAC

179

named Nazma (aged around 35), who said, “Women who think of god and society do not have freedom.” In her opinion women should not have freedom like men. If women are given freedom, the relationship between husband and wife will be spoiled. I probed further: why do you think that freedom will lead to friction between husband and wife? She replied:

“Women should be under the control and custody of men like her father or husband. Otherwise there is the likelihood of women being spoiled. The time is very bad. Society is ruined. There are no good people in society nowadays. Who saves who?”

This is the attitude of women with regard to freedom in their lives. Freedom and autonomy in any social, economic and political realm is a relative matter because of the variation of the perspectives from person to person. Women’s views with regard to their own freedom is important and has to be taken into account for presenting the issue from the point of view of the women, who actually consider what is really essential for their lives. According to the given statement, it can be argued that women mostly do not want their own freedom as the culture has cultivated a mindset and shaped their beliefs and behavior that they do not challenge. The rural social structure has taught them to be loyal to their husbands or other male persons in the family. The cultural constructions of society has a strong effect on the beliefs, actions and values of rural women, which is something that microcredit program could not break. I asked my respondents about whether they enjoy more freedom after joining the credit programs, and how they could exercise their freedom and autonomy in different aspects of their lives. Hena Begum (age 40) of Grameen Bank has said in response to my question as follows:

“Credit has killed my freedom. It did not help increase my freedom of movement in society. Now I have to bow down my head. My husband always remains in a pensive mood because of this. Sometimes my husband does not give me money for installments. I have to stay indoors for shame due to society and cannot go out. Credit [kisti] is a serious curse. It has to be paid even by selling blood. They [NGO workers] give legal threats to induce repayment. We pay the installment in time due to fear of police and social intimidation.”

A remarkable number of loan borrowing women have experienced limits to their movements due to their financial constraints. Only an insignificant number of women who have regular income and repayment capacity do not feel shy being in front of other people in the community, unlike those who cannot repay the loan in time. I have also found that the majority of poor women belonging to middle and lower income group face acute problems related to repayment.

180

As a result, they try to avoid being in touch with other people because of their inability to repay their loans, which has pushed them to the periphery of society. Normally, the culture and traditions of rural society do not allow women to move freely in society as and how they please. After joining the microcredit programs the scope of their mobility in the neighborhood has increased to a certain level, such as visiting the local loan center with other women. Local center is in center chief’s house situated in the neighborhood, which is not far beyond the area of their localities. Moreover, in the local center all of the visitors are women except the local field managers. Women’s mixing with other women in the same community does not add significant value to the changing pattern of their cultural attitude and behavior giving them the sense of appearing in public without shame and hesitation. However, the crux of the problem in this connection remains in the perception of women who do not consider their mobility in public places as a good thing. One of my respondents of Grameen named Achia (30) has said with regard to her mobility in male domain as follows:

“I did not get out of my home before taking loan. Nobody knew me. Now people know me as a bad person because I took a loan. People think that I am a needy person on account of my loan borrowing. People underestimate poor and needy persons.”

It is proven that microcredit has the potential force to bring women out of the boundary of the homestead through the obligatory physical appearance at the local loan center, and therefore, has increased their mobility in the society through the networks and organization. But it could not change the views women hold about the expansion of their own individual freedom and autonomy in the realm of social interactions and other significant arenas influencing their life choices. Women are forced to show up at the loan center in order to repay the loan-installments, but no educational and consciousness-raising issues that could have brought ideational changes among them are discussed in the center. Consequently, poor women appear to have not been able to develop their agency and autonomy in the realm of family and even in society due to the lack of proper knowledge and consciousness.

NGOs in the context of the study area are found to have focused on the financial sustainability of the programs instead of directing their attention to creating awareness and building a base of social education among the poor women. Rather they have controlled the financial behavior of the clients through the imposition of stiff organizational rules upon them. Microcredit programs have been successful in terms of repayment based on gendered social norms and traditional social relations, but the major objective of the programs have unfortunately been

181

overlooked to a large extent. Consequently, women have become disciplined and docile social subjects through the regular repayments of loans by complying with the rigid rules of NGOs instead of being able to enhance their agency and autonomy in the family and society by improving their range of economic options. Fernando (2006) observes that the microcredit programs targeting poor women as clients not only code “emancipation” in economic terms but also “influence the way people construct themselves, their conduct and their relations as free individuals”(p.5). Some studies (Kabeer, 1998; Mahmud, 2003) have explained that microcredit has bought women into the public forum and has widened the horizon of movement beyond the family precinct. My study differs from them on the grounds that women’s moving out does not necessarily signify their empowerment. Empowerment in this regard is how women construct their views on issues of the way they exercise and enjoy freedom and autonomy in different stages of their life cycle.