As a Kiva Fellow and a Kiva Lender, one of the things I value most about microfinance is it’s ability to raise the status of women.

At ‘BPW Patan’, the Kiva partner in Nepal where I am currently based, 100% of the borrowers are women. Although Kiva supports lending to men and women alike, at present more than 80% of the Kiva borrowers are women. The Grameen Bank have a 94% women borrower base and the United Nations estimates that roughly 76% of all microfinance clients around the world are women.

President of BPW Patan, Urmila Shrestha, meeting a group of new borrowers who have never before had access to Kiva loans

Lending to women has it’s benefits. A number of microfinance organisations including the Grameen Bank have found that women are more likely to repay loans than men which, from an investment perspective, makes women borrowers more sustainable. Studies have also found women are more likely to invest their income in education and health care for their children. Furthermore, lending to women creates an opportunity for financial independence that did not previously exist and gives women a sense of entitlement to contribute to the decisions on how money should be spent within the family. This naturally leads to an increase in women’s status in the home and in the wider community.

The various benefits of lending to women, combined with the fact that more women than men are accessing microfinance loans around the world, led my friend and I into a spirited debate regarding the potential impact this has on traditional gender roles, particularly in patriarchal cultures.

Some of the questions raised included: Are men feeling redundant because they are no longer the breadwinner? Is domestic violence decreasing or increasing as a result of this? Are husbands resentful of their wives success, particularly if their wife begins to earn more money than them? Are the tasks that were previously fulfilled by women, such as cooking and watching over the children, being shared more equally by men in the family? Are traditions that have been upheld for hundreds of years, particularly those ones that enforce gender roles, beginning to change?

I put these questions to my own field partner, BPW Patan, and also to all of the Kiva Fellows currently based in the field. These were my findings.

In Nepal, the general consensus is that men have been very supportive of the success their wives have encountered through microfinance loans, even if women begin to earn a higher income than their husbands. Urmila Shrestha, the President of BPW Patan, shared one story of a woman whose grocery shop was so successful that her husband abandoned his own profession and joined her in running the business. The borrower told Urmila: “Before microfinance, all of the decisions in our family were made by my husband. I didn’t get a say in anything, not even with the decisions that affected my own children. Now that I contribute the same amount of money to our family expenses, he comes to me and we make every decision together, even the small decisions.”

 A new Kiva borrower from the rural village of Dolchoky. Most of the women in this village have never had access to financial services before.

Earlier this week I travelled with BPW Patan to meet for the first time with a group of new women borrowers living in a rural village that relies mainly on subsistence agriculture. For many of the women, it is the first time they have taken on the responsibility of managing a loan and are being given the opportunity to generate their own income. During the visit, I spoke with one of the husbands of a new Kiva borrower. Durga’s wife is taking out her first microfinance loan which she will use to purchase vegetables so she can grow produce and sell it at the local market. This will be the first time Durga’s wife will earn her own income. Currently Durga is working as a road worker and he is the sole breadwinner in the family. Due to the loan, however, Durga will soon leave his job and begin working with his wife on her vegetable farm. When I asked who currently makes the money decisions in the family, Durga said he makes most of them but that he expects this to change when his wife takes on the responsibility of a loan. Durga also said that he is very supportive of his wife wanting to earn money and he then excused himself because he was concerned that his wife didn’t know his whereabouts and he wanted to return home to her.

 Durga, on his way home from work to meet his wife who has recently taken out her first Kiva loan

A number of other Kiva Fellows have shared similar experiences of husbands being supportive of their wives financial independence. Kiva Fellow Nancy Tuller said she recently met a female borrower whose husband used to be the sole bread winner in the family. By starting her own business, the borrower says her husband has a new found respect for her and their relationship is stronger. Nancy has also previously worked with the Grameen Bank and in one meeting with a group of women borrowers she found that: “the women spoke about how their status or “power” had risen since they were members. As one woman said, “We get the money, so we get to make the decisions.” The women unilaterally agreed that they had more power than before”.

Another Kiva Fellow, Lee Bruner, recently met with a female borrower who took out a loan to improve her beauty parlour. Her business did so well that her husband began working with her and she became the president of her borrowing group. This woman is considered to be the most responsible person in her group and, through the power of microfinance, her status has been raised in the community.

Unfortunately, not every Kiva Fellow has observed the type of women empowerment that myself and other Kiva Fellows have witnessed.

Kiva Fellow Suxy Marinkovich noted that although microfinance has empowered women and provided employment opportunities, some of the feedback from the women has indicated that their husbands don’t work as much anymore and spend more time drinking alcohol purchased with money that could otherwise be spent on the family.

Kiva Fellow Sarah Forbes noticed a number of problems women encountered as they began to gain financial independence. One loan officer said to Sarah that some of the borrowers do not tell their husbands they are taking out a loan because they worry that if their husbands find out they are earning money, they will take it from them. This can then lead to further problems because the borrower may struggle to make repayments and the borrower’s husband may not see it as his responsibility to make the repayment for her.

My overall conclusion, certainly in the case of Nepal, is that microfinance is slowly improving the way in which women are perceived in both the home and the community. And whilst in certain locations microfinance may not have led to parity between the sexes, responses from Kiva Fellows and my own observations in Nepal indicate that gender relations are improving and the status of women is being raised rather than remaining stagnant.

I will be updating this blog over the weekend with some less work orientated stories of my ‘Diddi’, the ferocious Putali at the orphanage and how the numerous village visits have gone.

Walking down Ring Road on Monday (the main road that encompasses the cities of Kathmandu and Patan) it felt as though there had been a mass evacuation and I was the only one who didn’t receive the memo. On a road that is usually so congested with traffic that I allow myself five minutes extra travel time in order to cross it, there was not a single vehicle to be seen and only a scattering of people here and there. The fruit sellers that usually ‘Namaste’ me on my walk into town had vanished and the usual strip of corner shops had pulled down their shutters. Tyre barricades burnt around the city and, as usual, a number of people who got in the way were attacked by protesters. A city-wide ‘bandh’ (a public protest) had been announced and Nepal closed shop for the day.

Bandh’s are quite regular occurrences in Nepal and they effectively close down the cities of Kathmandu and Patan. The protesters threaten any individual who dares to use a mode of transport other than walking on foot and any business owner who negates to close their shop for the day is open to attack. For the children of Nepal, a bandh is a holiday from school but for the rest of the population, a bandh disables the workforce and puts citizens livelihood at risk.

Four days into my fellowship with Kiva and I have quickly realised that productivity is a relative concept in Nepal. BPW Patan, the partner institute that I am based with, is comprised of a highly dedicated team, many of whom are volunteers and donate several days a week of their time to the organisation. The team travel long distances and endure hazardous conditions in order to reach out to women borrowers living in remote pockets of Nepal. And yet their productivity is compromised by barriers entirely beyond their control.

Last Saturday, my first official day with BPW Patan, we paid a visit to a group of women living in a hill area just 20km from Patan. About half of the BPW Patan team boarded a bus headed for the village with the expectation that it would take an hour or so to travel the 20km. Three and a half hours later and five stops to allow the overheated engine to cool, we arrived at the village. This journey, in which we clutched at the edge of a cliff while rocks fell from above and passed fallen boulders that could crush a car, will need to be made time and time in order to collect repayments from the borrowers and to gather Kiva journals about the women’s progress in their various businesses.

BPW Patan volunteers walking part of the way to the village on Monday, while the overheated vehicle cooled

Having overcome a bandh and a death defying journey, I was looking forward to seeing my new office where I will be working for the next three months. I arrived at the office for the first time yesterday morning all set to post my journals online, create a new lending team with the loan officers and send through a top notch press profile I recently came across. I was briefly stunned to see that no-one but myself, with my trusty laptop in hand, had computers. Not to worry though, I assumed I could just plug my own computer into the internet and we could work together from mine. Alas, the office is without internet and, I quickly discovered, all too often without power. I spent the afternoon sifting through papers and watching as five loan officers recorded loans with paper and pencil in a room without light.

These are the typical challenges faced by my MFI; city-wide protests that close down the workplace, driving through threatening terrain to ensure our loans reach far away borrowers and an office setting that lacks the basic facilities of internet and computers that I tend to take for granted.

Driving back down from the mountain after my first field visit (only two and a half hours on the way down!) I began discussing interest rates with BPW Patan’s President Urmila who was saying that BPW Patan offers borrowers one of the a flat rate of 10% interest. From my research of Kiva partners, I believe that this is one of the best interest rate offerred to any Kiva borrowers. Furthermore, the organisations requires compulsory savings of 50 rupees a month (roughly US $0.60) and gives borrowers 5% interest on their savings, which they receive in full when they finish their relationship with BPW Patan.

Considering the challenges my MFI faces on a daily basis, I find myself nothing short of in awe of BPW Patan. I realise now that the lengths they go to and the conditions they endure are so that they can keep these interest rates down and ensure that the borrower comes first. I look forward to watching the impact first hand that this MFI has on women borrowers in Nepal over the next three months and will keep you updated on my findings.

The view of my neighbourhood from my patio

It is the morning of my fourth day living in Dobhighat Chowk, a suburb on the outskirts of Patan, a neighbouring city of Kathmandu in Nepal. I have just returned from walking my bilingual dog (called Putali meaning butterfly) in the field behind my house. Sadly, after attempting to learn Nepali while I was in London, Putali seems to know more words than me.

Holy cows hanging out in Patan

Putali and I have had a number of disagreements since I arrived. The nightly sleeping arrangements have been a recurring issue as she insists on sleeping on my bed as close to my face as possible, and has the capacity to snore more loudly than a grown man. Daily dog walks are also a bit of an ordeal. This morning, only hours after the latest downpour from the monsoon rains, we were chased by two holy cows. While I was trying to run away, Putali was pulling towards the cows and I lost my balance and slipped on a puddle of mud. I returned home just now to be greeted by the cleaning lady whose first words were “I clean you”.

A Tibetan Buddhist Shrine

Arriving in Kathmandu on Tuesday was a bit trialling. There are very few street signs in Nepal and even fewer street numbers (addresses) so most people work out where to go by using landmarks. The instructions I was given for getting to my new address were as follows: take a taxi to Ring Road (the only signposted road anywhere near my home) to the area called Dobhighat Chowk and ask people on the street for Sunrise Towers. Take the dirt road that leads to Sunrise Towers (still under construction, expected date of completion 2007) and then continue on for another 100m until the wood factory and call ‘Ram’ on his mobile. Unfortunately, Ram (the security guard/fix it man at my house) had not topped up his phone with credit so I couldn’t get through and there were a number of wood factories on my street. I was forced to go down the culturally imperialistic route of walking from one wood factory to another asking where the ‘white people live’, since I am living in a predominantly Nepalese community in an apartment above an American lady.

At long last I arrived at my apartment and couldn’t have been more pleased with the place. The house is three storeys high and has been divided into three apartments with mine on top. There is a garden below that Ram tends to everyday and a rooftop patio above me. I have one bedroom, a study, lounge room, bathroom and outdoor kitchen and for the whole month it is less than what I paid for a single week’s in London. At the moment I even have a functioning shower (luke warm), constant electricity and internet. This is all pretty unusual for Nepal. When Jess and I visited Mukti Orphanage in Kathmandu in 2007, showering was done with a bucket and the power frequently went off, which prompted the kids at Mukti to sit in a circle in the dark praying for the power to come back on. Needless to say, I will be appreciating the showers and electricity while they last.

A handful of the children from Mukti Orphanage

I have spent my free days before starting work by wandering around the temples, visiting Mukti Orphanage and sussing out the hygienic food options in my area since my first dinner here consisted of dal and a potato curry for 70 cents and several free flies. On Wednesday I spent the afternoon at Mukti and was pretty shocked to see how run down it has become since Jess and I were there two years ago. The orphanage has moved to a new building and now all thirty children sleep in one bedroom. Most of the children were sick and they didn’t seem to be as happy or energetic as they used to be. I am trying to make a film at the moment, which will hopefully be posted on here soon that will help to raise funds for Mukti. Yesterday I made it into the heart of Patan and was befriended by a Nepalese guy called Summit who proceeded to take me to some pretty remarkable Buddhist temples including one that is constructed out of 9999 Buddha statues and another that holds a festival every Thursday for women so they can pray for their husbands to live a long life.

Durbar Square in the heart of Patan

I begin work tomorrow with a field visit to a village in the mountains about 20km from here to meet a group of women that are hoping to take out loans with Kiva. Hopefully I will have enough content to write a second blog within a week or two so please visit again soon!

Namaste,

Polly

This blog is intended to be the first of several that I will write as part of my Kiva Fellowship. All of the blogs will be published on this site and a number (more work related) will also be published on the Kiva Fellows Blog; a public site that contains stories from Kiva Fellows located all around the world.

I have just begun a seven month Fellowship with Kiva. My first placement with Kiva is in Nepal and my second placement is undecided at this stage.

Kiva is an organisation that connects people all around the world through lending, for the sake of alleviating poverty. It allows an individual to lend a small amount of money to an entrepreneur in a number of developing countries around the world. Usually the business is relatively small for example a woman in Nepal might need a loan of $400 to buy a cow so she can sell milk to her neighbours. Once the entrepreneur has repaid the loan, the lender can re-lend their money to help another entrepreneur.

My task as a Kiva Fellow is to connect the lender with the borrower to make the lending and borrowing experience as personal as possible. I will help to create a ‘borrower profile’ which will include a photo of the entrepreneur and the story of their business and hopes for the future. To follow up, I will send journals out to the lenders which will contain stories, videos and photos from the field that will let the lender know how the entrepreneur they helped is going.

To get a better idea of how Kiva works, please visit: www.kiva.org