Rallying for Women’s Economic Power

Increasing access to affordable capital can unlock women’s economic power. In emerging economies, a woman’s ability to earn an income often depends on being able to start her own business – Melinda French Gates, Co-Chair, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

It is widely known that when women can fully pursue economic opportunities and make decisions over their own lives, their families, communities, and countries emerge stronger.

A recent McKinsey report projects that advancing women’s equality can lead to a USD28 trillion increase in global GDP. This is why governments, international organizations, development agencies, and non-profits have been focused for decades on advancing social development and gender equality by prioritizing Women’s Economic Power (WEP).

What this essentially means is ensuring that women have access to all the resources they need to assert full control over their lives — not just income, but also others like credit, contraceptives, and childcare. But for this to become a reality, certain conditions need to be present so that they can make more independent and informed choices about their health, expenditure, finance, and employment as well as more empowered choices for their families and children.

In India, WEP has been steadily gaining ground with women-led development assuming center stage. The country has been leading the way in demonstrating some models of WEP at scale including the successful mobilization of 100 million women into a federated structure of women-owned and women-led community institutions under the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM).

It has also demonstrated the viability and power of instituting a vast network of hundreds of thousands of women agents who provide financial, health, agri, digital, and business advisory services at the last mile. But before we take a closer look at an example of one such last-mile agent let us take a step back and consider the policy ecosystem that has made the creation and sustenance of this network possible.

Consider for example the impact that digital innovations such as India’s Digital Public Infrastructure and government-sponsored schemes, including the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana1 (PMJDY), have had on incentivizing WEP. The PMJDY program, which is focused on improving financial inclusion nationwide, has played a pivotal role in helping ramp up women’s bank account ownership2 from 26 percent to a whopping 78 percent over 10 years.

ENABLING WOMEN’S FINANCIAL POWER

While this huge effort laid a strong foundation and was a critical first step, many women’s bank accounts remained inactive. A closer look revealed a potential challenge and a huge opportunity to address the missing link – women banking agents. Earlier, just 10 percent of last-mile banking correspondents used to be women. The idea of creating a special cadre of BC Sakhi’s came about to address this gap.

Consider the story of one such BC Sakhi, Sarla Sachan in Uttar Pradesh.

At first uncertain by the newness and potential complexity of using advanced tools to serve as a last-mile bank functionary, Sarla soon gained confidence.

“After my training, I realized that up to 50 percent of work that gets done at a bank’s physical branch can now be done by me sitting right here at my Gram Panchayat “, she says. In the first month, she succeeded in opening 17 bank accounts and more than quadrupled this number to reach 70 in the second month.

In India, as in most large developing economies, a large majority of women are self-employed with most running their enterprises. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor3 for example estimates that up to 17 percent of women in developing countries are already “early-stage” entrepreneurs, while more than 40 percent wish to start a business.

In helping open and run their bank accounts, BC Sakhis like Sarla are enabling women across the country to invest in their economic power by gaining ready access to credit which can then be used to open a business.

INCENTIVIZING ENABLING CONDITIONS

And yet, while empowering access to banking and credit is undoubtedly a key and powerful lever, WEP also rests on other important preconditions. This includes the existence of conducive laws, supportive policies, and effective implementation. Often, the laws and policies created to enable greater rights and access to resources for women come up against the prevalence of social norms that discourage equal opportunities for men and women.

This includes ideas surrounding a woman’s ability to work outside the house, her right to have independent access to credit and finance, her agency to make informed and independent decisions regarding her own and her children’s health, along with her access to shelter and childcare.

MULTIPLYING POSITIVE OUTCOMES

Everyone has a role to play in building and supporting WEP. Whether it is governments, think tanks, nonprofits, or communities, each can contribute to facilitating it and sustaining it. Research from across decades suggests that when women are empowered to more fully participate in economies, they help to improve the financial stability of their households. This serves as a protective shield that enables families to recover sooner from unforeseen changes and deepens an entire country’s resilience.

Data also highlights a correlation between women’s economic influence and reduced poverty which in turn has a positive effect on many other outcomes including food security. At a time when climate change is leading to more adverse weather events that are negatively impacting food security, governments, policy think tanks, non-profits, and development organizations must come together and make WEP a reality. Doing so will not only transform women’s lives but lay the ground for better, healthier, and more resilient communities and societies.

(Aksha is a platform that convenes knowledge and expertise that addresses India’s challenges in healthcare and social development.

The platform aims to bring forth ideas, solutions, data and evidence on what’s working and what’s not. It will also provide the opportunity to share lessons learnt globally along with how these can be applied to the challenges faced by India).