Lecture 10, Feb. 5: Imagined Female Empowerment: Two Productivity-based Empowerment: Microfinance and the Feminization of Labour

Goals of lecture

Imagined Female Empowerment

Microfinance

Labour migration

CONT

Microfinance —Grameen Bank Model

Feminization of Labour Migration

Overarching question

• In what ways do these examples imagine female empowerment

• What are missing/blind spots here?

Competing Visions of Female Empowerment: Productivity based vs Agency (Power)-based

Productivity based— More tangible

Agency based— Primary feminist scholarship challenged this problem, autonomy of women, regional meaning of female empowerment—We need to politicize sexism

Overarching Issues Comparing microfinance & female labour migration

Neoliberal realities

Female Empowerment: Connect to neoliberalism: Excaserbating inequalities and vulnerabilities of already oppressed/disempowered groups, Popular feminism being connected to capitalist ideals, patriarchal ideals, advocacy for human rights, women still carry on burdens that come with gender binaries eg. women need to send money back home. Giving adequate credit to women seen as win win bc of trickle down effect theory (That doesn’t actually work)

Short term solutions (Band-aids):

Neoliberal realities

• Retreat/Absence of state (State should support market but minimum intervention if state)

  • NGOs “shadow states” (Karim)

• Widening inequality

• Encouraging women to participate in markets

  • Self-help development

Microfinance: Empowerment vs disempowerment

• Microfinance programs continue and perpetuate gender inequality

• Microfinance programs seen as miracle solution for poverty and gender equality bc all indicators show it would work—high payment rate

• Low income women do not have collateral so they cannot borrow credit and lgeally cannot inherit land

A Miracle Medicine

• Microfinance: A miracle medicine for poverty alleviation w gender equity

• Challenging conventional banking practice

  • Removing existing barriers on low income women

  • CONT

Economy of Shame

• We must pay attention to limits of this practice

• We don’t neccessarily know how much of loan repayment is done through coercion

• If go to one organization and one woman isn’t giving back to program, you cannot run the program

• NGOs running these programs lack funding bc states no longer provide subsidies or funds

• These women don’t have stock but when groups formed they can peer pressure each other to pay loans (Shame people who do not pay back loan)

Microfinance and Its Discontents (Lamia Karim, 2011)

• Prioritizing self-interest of NGOs (recovering loans)

• Oversimplified women’s capacity to repay loans

• Disempowering women rather than empowering women

Rhetoric 1: High repayment rate

• Reality: Gap btwn willingly repaid loans and coercively recovered loans

• Coercive repayment methods

• Regardless of women’s actual capacity (skills, knowledge, access to resources)

Rhetoric 2: Prioritizing women

“Women as primary borrowers”

• Reality: Gender inequality

• Gap btwn borrower (Loan recipient=women) and user (one who controls loan=men)

CONT

Rhetoric 3: No Collateral

No collateral from the poor

• Reality: The economy of shame

  • Societal collateral (Peer pressure=enforcers for loan repayment

  • CONT

Central Issues

• The economy of shame

  • Problematic behavoir of microfinance NGOs

  • Coercive loan repayment (Social collateral, collective shaming)

• Sustained structural barriers against women

• Promotion of neoliberal subjectivity

  • Shifting responsibilities from the state to indvdls (women)

• Promotion of self care and self reliable citizens (self responsibility)

Structural Barriers

Why do low income women have limited access to credit?

• Collateral requ or obtaining loans

• Women’s subjugated position (gender division of labour)

• Devaluation of female labour

• Legal discrimination (inheritance law)

Neoliberal Realities

• Microfinance—A bandaid solution?

  • Sustained structural gender based barriers

  • What are other options other than market centered self help solutions?

Feminization of labour migration

• Important productivity based female empowerment

• Labour export policiy deeply rooted in women

Profound disagreement—Women’s increased labour mobility

Mobility (Opportunity, freedom) vs immobility (Barriers-unfreedom)

• Wage differencial = Sending and recieving (huge incentive to move somewhere and send money back home)

• Labour mobility is now a female dominated field

Migration can empower women economically and social and help people realize their personal asperations and educational potential

Inherently exploitative system of migration and recruitment (Pande 2013)

• Hard to interview these women because they have no days off so they are often interviewed while they’re working

• Women come from poor areas w out sustainability, so they go other places to find jobs, but must pay fee to move

• Human trafficking or passport confiscation (take away mobility) often happens as soon as women arrive at airport

• Many immigration policies are designed to enable abuse

Multiple forms of barriers (Immobility)

Legal barriers — Dependence on the employer, compulsory return, labour rights abuses

Social barriers — Family separation, left behind from children —-**Double burder

Economic barriers — Devaluation of labour, perpetual insecurity—— **Double burden

• Goal is to maximize profit of labour market