Among the goals of the United Nations’ ambitious new agenda, which aims to tackle poverty, inequality and climate change by 2030, is the empowerment of all women and girls. This will not be an easy task. The majority of the 3 billion people worldwide living on less than $2 a day are female.
Many of these women are excluded from the formal economy by legal and cultural structures that prevent them from accessing loans, savings accounts and other critical financial services that would help them launch businesses, provide for their families and plan for the future.
In a roundtable debate in New York, hosted by the Guardian and sponsored by Opportunity International, participants gathered to identify the challenges facing women excluded from the economy and talk about how the private sector and civic society could help tackle these issues.
Private education programme in Rwanda
Opening the doors to more private sector involvement involves getting over the trust barrier, said Nathan Byrd, head of education finance at Opportunity International. He related how his charity, which specialises in microfinancial services, initially found it difficult to launch an affordable private education programme in Rwanda, aimed at getting more girls into school.
“It required financial institutions getting deeply involved and the response was fear,” he said. “The government didn’t want banks involved in education – it was a scary thought.”
There is still a long way to go culturally before the development community accepts the participation of the private sector beyond asking for handouts, agreed Tara Nathan, executive director for international development at MasterCard. “How do you create a true partnership? It’s when both sides are getting more than they’re putting in and for the private sector, that typically means profitability,” she acknowledged.
Another challenge is that large corporations see each other as competitors, commented Olajobi Makinwa, senior civil society coordinator at UN Global Compact, which works with businesses on corporate social responsibility. “Collective action is important as we move forward,” she said.
Helping women and girls get better access to financial services remains a daunting task.
“Some of these platforms are very clearly not marketed to women, said Evelyn Stark, assistant vice-president of financial inclusion at MetLife Foundation. “You look at mobile money screens and they’re in English where [many women] don’t speak English. They have too many words where literacy is low. And they constantly make it difficult for women to use them. So, in a lot of countries, what happens? The woman hands the phone over to the guy behind the counter, tells him her pin number and then off he goes and does her banking for her. If we really want to serve women, we have to figure out how to make the whole process profitable for sure, but also how to make it attractive and make it work for her.”
Scott MacMillan, a communications specialist at the non-profit Brac USA, said: “Sustainability, profitability, the mix of private sector motives and social-good motives – you’ll hear no argument from me.”
But he questioned whether organisations were reaching ultra-poor women, those “on the edge of survival”. Many of them were even being excluded by microfinance groups who worried that they would drag other members down.
Naila Chowdhury, chair of the non-profit Women4Empowerment, said women who had taken $100 or $200 loans through microlending also found it difficult to move up to the next financial step.
She suggested a Women’s Development Index (WDI), along the lines of the Human Development Index, which is a measure of living standards used to assess a country’s development.
“These women have credit histories and we need those WDI indicators for financers and investors because it’s not charity, we are teaching sustainability for the long term,” she said.
The roundtable heard examples of public/private partnerships that have been successful.
Opportunity International’s education programme in Rwanda went ahead and is flourishing with an active portfolio of $2.5m dollars, serving 60 low-cost private schools. That number is expected to grow to 200.
Health insurance for women in Nigeria
Toyin Saraki, the founder and president of The Wellbeing Foundation Africa, said health insurance is helping in her country of Nigeria where death in childbirth is still a problem. “The same amount of money that I used to use to help 10 people a month with out-of-pocket health expenses is now facilitating 480 people a month, 5,000 people a year, into health insurance,” she revealed. The scheme is a tripartite partnership between her organisation, the government and a Dutch health foundation.
Mary Ellen Iskenderian, president and CEO of Women’s World Banking, said the safety net of insurance is something many women value enormously.
Women typically save 10% to 15% of their monthly incomes in preparation for health emergencies, she said. “It’s an extraordinary amount and we now have a product called the caregiver insurance policy, whose monthly premiums are a fraction of that 10% to 15% and which covers out-of-pocket costs,” she added.
Daniela Ligiero, vice-president of Girls and Women Strategy at the United Nations Foundation, quoted from a McKinsey report that looked at the benefits of investing in women and girls which estimates that between $12tn and $20tn could be added to the global economy if females were allowed to have more control over their finances. “We need to focus on women and girls not only because it is the right thing to do but also because it is the smart thing to do,” she commented.
More than 70 million women have entered the workforce in Latin America and the Caribbean since the 1980s, Lina Maria Salazar Ortegon, of the Inter-American Development Bank, pointed out. “In Peru, for example, more heads of households are women than men,” she said, “and that is great news for companies thinking about innovative business models and how to take advantage of that new role women have in the household.”
A way forward is to take advantage of the private sector’s wide range of skills and the vast amount of data it holds.
Saraki said when she visits villages in Nigeria she sees Coca Cola and 7-Up for sale. “Then I see a child who doesn’t have antibiotics or a mother who doesn’t realise that a sore throat can become rheumatic heart disease and I think, ‘hang on a minute, if the private sector can get their soft drinks to this village why are we having difficulty getting information to this village, or the right medicine?’”
“We have to look at the private sector to see how they get these supply chain challenges right that everybody else is struggling with,” added Saraki.
Too often, companies are seen merely as cheque books, pointed out Natalie Byrne, director of global impact at the skincare company Dermalogica. “You’re missing our resources, our products, our expertise, our marketing capabilities,” she said. “We’re entrepreneurial and we’re nimble and quick and we can bring an entirely different set of skills that are in line with the to-do lists of the SDGs [social development goals].”
Ndunge Kiiti, professor of international development at the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion, brought up the importance of country-specific data for NGOs and the private sector. Researchers, particularly local ones, can play key roles in collecting this vital information, she said. “In the tension between marketing and education, we can promote and advertise products all we want, and people will sign up for them, but if they don’t understand how to use them …? We’ve seen differences in policy, and even new products, out of research.”
“Collecting data, visualising data and then using data for decision-making is something that could really be fantastic,” acknowledged Ligiero.
Digital finance and female empowerment
The excitement around digital finance should not obscure the reality that the road ahead remains a difficult one for female empowerment, the panel agreed. Technology has not been the great equaliser it was supposed to be. In the past three years some 700m bank accounts were opened in the developing world, but the gap between men and women holding accounts did not move.
Dana Rice, senior vice president of global external relations and donor strategy for Opportunity International, said she was taking away from the roundtable the need to measure impact. “Using the information provided by our clients as to what they need, and tracking and communicating the impact of our products and services, has taken on more importance,” she said.
The era of handouts is over, agreed Saraki. “Everybody wants to see impact, to see women stand on their own and not come back so that we can move on to the next batch of people to help. Once you get a woman, you also get her family.”
At the table: giving women control over their finances debate
- Eliza Anyangwe (Chair) Journalist
- Nathan Byrd Head of education finance, Opportunity International
- Dana Rice Senior vice president of global external relations and donor strategy, Opportunity International
- Natalie Byrne Director of global impact/FITE, Dermalogica
- Naila Chowdhury Chair, Women4 Empowerment
- HE Toyin Saraki Founder/President, The Wellbeing Foundation Africa
- Mary Ellen Iskenderian President and CEO, Women’s World Banking
- Ndunge Kiiti Prof of int. development, IMTFI: Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion
- Evelyn Stark Assistant vice president financial inclusion lead, MetLife Foundation
- Daniela Ligiero VP of girls and women strategy, United Nations Foundation
- Olajobi Makinwa Chief, anti-corruption and transparency Africa, UN Global Contact
- Lina Maria Salazar Ortegon Opportunities for the majority, Inter-American Development Bank
- Scott MacMillan Senior writer and communications specialist, Brac USA
- Tara Nathan Executive director, international development, MasterCard