Obviously an empowerment process is one which tackles both the condition and position of women; a process in which questions about the structures of power, and within these, gender subordination, are continually raised and explored (Batliwala 1995). As Rowlands (1999:144) explains: “Through all these definitions runs the theme of understanding: if you understand your situation, you are more likely to act to do something about it”. Because of the acute poverty and overwhelming work burden of poor women in Nigeria, there is a genuine dilemma for most empowerment activists: should they respond to women's immediate problems (‘condition’: that is, the gender needs), or take the longer route of raising their consciousness about the underlying structural inequalities which have created these problems (‘position’ which is the strategic gender interest16)? Certainly, the implementation and means of achieving women’s empowerment has remained an unresolved element of the approach. For
example, Parpart (2002:43) observed that while some scholars called for women- centred, grassroots development to empower women, the preoccupation with women’s role in the economy went largely unquestioned.
Thus, as a country in the southern hemisphere, Nigeria (especially Southern Nigeria) presents a particularly interesting case for examining the dynamics of women’s empowerment and its relationship to micro-credit programmes. As illustrated in Chapter 2, nearly half of Nigeria’s population of 140 million are women. It was equally established that the majority of these women live below the poverty line (see Mama 1996, Ezumah 2000, Iheduru 2002, Izugbara 2004).What is more, among the Igbos and Yorubas, both monogamous and polygamous marriages exist; but in practise, these people do not allow women to have more than one husband. Verhoef (cited in Lemire et al 2002: 92) notes in traditional households, women performed important economic roles. The household evolved around the woman. Each marriage, Verhoef observed, established a ‘house’, which centred around one wife and her children, rather than around the husband. Should her husband die, she could not inherit the land because it was communal land. Given that most women in these two communities face an uphill task in raising capital during and after the death of their spouses, most of them embark on informal rotating savings and credit association or schemes to ensure their wellbeing and that of their brood. Thus, one of the means by which women’s empowerment is currently being pursued in Nigeria is through the provision of gender-specific micro- credit17 interventions.
Further, as illustrated in Chapter 2, extended family systems play an important role in buffering socioeconomic inequality in the Yoruba or Igbo societies, notably through fosterage of children across nuclear family units. Moreover, the extended family system permits frequent exchanges of resources and children across nuclear family units in ways that are presumed to reduce socioeconomic inequality. As a result, these provide a
17
According to Aidan Hollis, one of the earliest recorded micro-credit schemes, the Irish loan fund, was set up by an Irish nationalist, Dean J. Swift in the early 18th century, who deplored the inability of the honest but impoverished tradesman/woman to obtain credit to carry on their business (Lemire et al 2002: 74). This scheme was later replaced with the Irish loan fund. Hollis notes this programme was drawing on what we might, today, call social capital in the same way as group lending schemes operated by micro-credit organisations such as the Grameen Bank. Moreover, Hollis points out that the Irish loan fund was the most important institution in Ireland for poor women in the 1840s and 1850s, as many accounts were given of how women were able to put the money to good use.
socio-economic safety net. However, since the later 1980s, this trend has continuously declined in its role as a result of the introduction of SAP. SAP has created two contradictory pressures on extended family support networks. While the increased hardships aggravated the poor’s dependency on extended family assistance, the same pressures compromised the ability of many families to maintain assistance to needy relatives. This drastically reduces the assistance many market or rural women would have gained from extended family members. Indeed, SAP failed to establish a base for sustainable, balanced economic development. In this wake, the traditional socio- economic safety net became too weak to continue its traditional role of supporting extended family members. Therefore, most market and rural women enlisted the support of micro-credit schemes for their economic survival and continuity.
Of all the numerous programmes and projects addressing both the short and long term needs of women in Nigeria, micro-credit schemes seem to have taken prominence. According to the 2001 UN Economic Commission for Africa’s Report, in response to the issue of women’s poverty, Nigeria established both income-generating activities, linked to formal banking sectors, and micro-credit initiatives: targeting women farmers and ensuring equal access to credit. Since the establishment of the People’s Bank (A Grameen Bank replica) in the 1980s, the micro-credit schemes in Nigeria have attracted many customers. There are no accurate figures of the number of women participating in the scheme. Nevertheless, a rough estimate puts the figures in hundreds of thousands (this includes participants in traditional rotating micro-credit schemes). Millions of dollars have equally been spent both in promotion and in loans to women (and sometimes men). Although NACRDB18’s major clients are women (market and rural), the bank equally extends loans to other groups in the name of “Macro-Credit19”. NACRDB’s conditions for borrowing are the following;
18
NACRDB stands for Nigeria Agricultural and Cooperative Rural Development Bank 19
As explained in the previous chapter, NACRDB inherited the assets and services of the former Nigeria Agricultural and Cooperative Bank (NACB) and other related institutions which previously provided agricultural loans to both mechanized farmers and non-mechanized farmers in Nigeria. Therefore with the merger, NACRDB still offer the services rendered independently by these institutions, under the name “Macro-Credit and Micro-credit schemes”. While “micro-credit” schemes target rural and urban poor low income earners, artisan and petty traders (market women) with loans not exceeding 250,000:00 Naira (1,798.56 US$), “macro-credit” targets medium and large-scale agricultural projects promoted or owned by individuals, cooperatives or self-help groups. These loans range from 250,000:00 Naira and above.
i. Mandatory minimum saving deposit amounts and periods for eligibility for the loan scheme (the minimum account opening balance for an individual is 500 Naira, about US $3.59).
ii. Track record and confirmation of status of prospective client iii. Provision of reputable guarantors
iv. Feasible/viable proposals for prospective client
While many participants use their husbands, some use members of their extended family, while others use their religious leaders or local chiefs to provide confirmation of status and equally act as guarantors. According to NACRDB’s information brochure, the bank’s interest rate regime on loans is generally concessionary and discriminatory in favour of subsistence farmers and traders (that is, market and rural women) to whom the bank’s bulk of loanable funds are directed. The interest rate is placed at 8% per annum. The Cooperatives (a Micro-credit organisations run by NGOs especially in Western Nigeria) have similar borrowing conditions but peg their interest rate to 15 Naira for every 1000 Naira (at 1.5%).
Noting the proliferation of these schemes, Izugbara and Iheduru20 maintain that currently diverse organisations in Nigeria have stated a commitment to using the micro-credit strategy to empower women. These include government ministries, international development agencies and development NGOs (Izugbara 2004 and Iheduru 200221). In the process of their studies, both scholars examined the extent to which programmes have resulted in women's economic, social, and political empowerment. These two studies further analysed the effects of micro-credit on the mitigation of poverty and the policy implications of micro-credit on women’s economic activities within the broad framework of the gender stereotypical milieu of these enterprises. However, these scholars differ in their conclusions on the level of women’s empowerment through the application of micro-credit programmes. For example, while Iheduru (2002) argued that “there is a direct relationship between micro-credit and women’s empowerment in Nigeria,” Izugbara on the other hand maintains that despite the powerful logic of the
20
Both writers are Nigerian researchers on gender and environmental anthropology respectively. 21
Ngozi G. Iheduru of Abia State University Nigeria in a paper presented at the 8th International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women, at the Makerere University, Kampala-Uganda illustrates the relationship between ‘Women Entrepreneurship and Development’ with the application of micro-credit schemes.
gender-specific micro-credit strategy (see figure 3) and donors’ commitment, there is little empirical evidence to support its actual impact on the goal of women’s empowerment. In addition, the conditions of borrowing might deter participants’ from taking the loan.
In practice, however, there are possibilities that where there is an increase in income from women’s economic activities, there may be no effective control by women over income going into the household and no material benefits for women themselves. In the case of Nigeria for instance, men may control women’s income or expect women to use all their income for pre-determined household expenditure (see Chapter 7). This allows men to use their own previous contributions to the household for their own personal expenditure. In fact, men may be very supportive of women’s micro-credit and other income generation activities for this very reason.
Taking a critical look at the structural dynamics in promoting micro-credit provision Mayoux (2000) asserts that these programmes targeting women are often promoted as a component of packages to absorb the shock of structural adjustment programmes and globalisation. These economic changes mean new social policy prescriptions which seriously disadvantage women, decrease public sector availability of complementary services and remove any existing welfare nets for the very poor. Hence, the assumptions of automatic beneficial impacts of micro-finance can thus at worst be used as a pretext for withdrawing support for other empowerment and poverty alleviation measures.
In depicting the exploitative use of the scheme, Izugbara (2004) maintains that the very language of mainstream discourse on micro-credit schemes, and their role in the empowerment process (strengthening, capacity-building, capital formation, participation and wellbeing) has tended to betray a normative view of the purpose and goal of development action.
In general terms, the argument for and against the role of micro-credit schemes in women’s economic empowerment is evenly divided. However, subsequent chapters in this study aim to critically evaluate this development strategy in relation to market and rural women in southern Nigeria. These chapters will attempt to present clearly the
dynamics that influence poor and marginalised women, and the repositioning of the concept of empowerment by these women.