Should we be lending to men?
31 May 2010 at 23:12 ptash 13 comments
By Peter Tashjian, KF11 Armenia
Recently, some interesting data was brought to my attention. Apparently women entrepreneurs are able to raise funds more quickly than men in the world of Kiva. My initial reaction was that this is wrong. The people I know would treat both men and women equally. Why then is it that people seem to more readily lend to women? I know from history, some quite recent, where women have had less rights than men.
“Woman suffrage in the United States was achieved gradually at state and local levels, during the 19th Century and early 20th” (from Wikipedia.org). Therefore even in the United States, it wasn’t until the 20th century that women were given equal rights. Now I realize that throughout history there have been different cultures with various complex organization systems and today in the United States, women traditionally get paid less than men. Though, it looks like this condition is being improved fortunately.
In any case, the issue is a very confusing one for me. There is way too much data on the topic for my brain to process. So the question is; who should I be lending to, men or women?
I decided to start from a blank slate and review each borrower profile on its own merit. Should I be lending to a male hair dresser in Yerevan Armenia? I lent to a woman who runs a small bakery so why not to a male hair dresser? This gentleman needs to live and provide for his family as well, and he too is entitled to equal opportunity.
So I decided that instead of playing the classic game of “boys vs. girls” where we took turns chasing one another during recess in elementary school, I’m going to make decisions without consideration to sex or occupation. So I decided to lend to the male hair dresser in Yerevan, Armenia. After leaving the army, this was the job he fell into and due to his resourcefulness and talent, made the most of it and now he’s expanding his business to serve women clients.
Entry filed under: Armenia, KF11 (Kiva Fellows 11th Class). Tags: Armenia, hair stylist, Kiva, microfinance, peter tashian, Yerevan.
1. Thomas | 4 June 2010 at 10:02
Just on correction: The bank founded by Yunus is called Grameen Bank (not Yunus bank). sorry for the error. -et
2. Thomas | 4 June 2010 at 09:59
Hi Peter
I’d like to offer a clear answer quite different from most contributions here. The reason to lend mainly to women is that they are statistically more reliable to pay back than men are. Full stop.
If you study the work of Mohammad Yunus, the “inventor” of micro finance (Yunus Bank, Bangladesh) and now Nobel prize holder, you see he focussed on women, mainly in groups. Women in small villages easily form solidarity groups, as they already know who is reliable and who is less so.
In a recent presentation for the Dalai Lama in Zurich that I happend to attend, Bunker Roy, the founder of the Barefoot College (India), reported on his work to improve situation in poor indian villages. His approach is to install solar cells and bring in portable electric lamps. This allows the citizens to learn and work after sunset in their homes and so improve their conditions. To maintain the whole thing he recruits 2-3 people from the village, trains them as engineers to install and maintain solar cells and electronic lamps (6 months at his barefoot college) and then sends them home to their village and have a charity donate the solar cells and lamps.
Bunker Roy reported that after some initial tries he only accepts women, preferably grandmothers aged ~40, for training as engineers. He said: “When I trained men, they first asked for a certificate, then they installed the cells. When the villagers had paid the agreed fee for this work, they bought booze to drink and the next day the travelled down to Delhi to look for a good job based on the certificate. Women don’t do this. They feel responsible for their village.”
Yes, (we) men usually feel less responsible for the community than women. Yes, (we) men have less inhibition to leave our family and our duties behind and look for another place to start over. This genereal tendency is accentuated in developing countries.
Economically, this difference in behaviour between men and women is reflected in the higher attractivity of women borrowing. And this – so I am convinced – is the main reason behind the disequilibrium in lending speed.
The “equal rights” approach normally has no impact on market trends. The markets don’t care about such stuff, they care about risks, profits and reliability.
Thomas
3. Julia | 5 June 2010 at 05:05
Hi Thomas,
I have quite some personal experience with lending and borrowing from friend to friend and at least here there is no gender difference: there are reliable people and unreliable people.
If in traditional villages the women are the ones providing for the community it is only locigal to lend to them to get the best impact on the whole community.
But I think it is a difference if you give someone money for his business (as on Kiva) or an education (as in that Barefoot College you mentioned). You can demand your money back but of course you can´t turn someone into a slave forcing him to work for you. If men tend to leave their village you can still demand your money back as soon as they show up somewhere again so you can still borrow to them, can´t you. (I have read that some MFIs have difficulties because slum inhabitants just leave never to show up again to pay their loan back but obviously men and women went away there not only men. I guess if their original home is an intact village those men (and women) will still like to see their families one day and not stay away their whole life just to keep 300 Dollars or whatever)
If I was thinking about profits (in money) I would not lend on Kiva at all. The risk is small and it has nothing to do with men or women as long as I give my money to an MFI. The MFI is responsible for the return of my money. If they feel it is not safe to lend to that unreliable man they won´t do so or they will pester him about the money until he pays back because they know Kiva will stop the partnership if the MFI is not able to ensure the repayment.
For me Kiva is about providing equal opportunities and wealth for all. Women are far from having equal rights in many countries and money is power.
I have subscribed to follow up comments so please go ahead. I am looking forward to any other thought you might have on the topic.
Greetings from Julia
4. Julia | 3 June 2010 at 11:18
Peter, I do not see men being deprived of opportunities by women.
You wrote: „I know from history, some quite recent, where women have had less rights than men.“ History? As G. Bostelmann already wrote women still have more catching up to do. Women do not have equal rights and opportunities in every country anyway but also countries that seem to provide equal rights are in a neverending process to provide those rights.
Alan Chattaway is right about the fact that there is equal payment for the same work in the US and as I may add in Germany. Our chancellor is a woman all right. But I talked to a woman who works as a women´s representative for a German city. Her job is to keep an eye on regulations and their impact on women and to help provide equal opportunities.
She told me that women e.g. hesitate to take big loans – ok, so we are chickens. Accordingly the natural step to help women get into business would be to provide them with small loans. The next thing that happens is that a man is showing up to demand the same rights for him and applying for one of that loans. That would be ok if there was enough funding to promote men and women alike but there is not. I think Kiva should concentrate on helping women, too, because there are not so many people around who focus on helping women.
What you are trying to do, Peter, is to give men equal rights on Kiva. That would be ok for me if at the same time you would successfully attack structures that support men over women. That way everyone would have equal opportunities.
Unfortunately the lack of solidarity among women is a problem, too. That means women who do not get a chance need men like you to stand on their side to level the playing field.
If you just ignore the problems women´s rights will become history soon enough. Even female circumcision is becoming a problem in Germany as immigrants from Africa bring their customs when coming here. I personally know a man from Guinea for two years now. We often talk because I help him with his correspondence with offices. One of those days I asked him about his opinion on female circumcision. He turned out to be an average Guinean man with the average opinion on that. I tried to convince him that it was very, very bad. All he had to say was that Islam did not forbid it and if his daughters were to live in Guinea it would have to be done. I could not convince him – he thought he did not have to make a decision anyway because it were the women who did that – but he later told me that he had heard that a woman who had circumcised her granddaughters was arrested when arriving at a French airport for a visit. That is what made him think.
When it comes to Kiva I look at every loan. I know that a child in Tanzania whose mother dies while its father lives becomes an orphan because he is not required to care. I know that most brides in Kyrkystan are abducted against their will and are considered tainted once they arrive at the man´s house so they cannot flee easily. etc. etc. etc……..etc etc……..
I love men. And I lend to some men as well. But some other loans have no chance with me (” X comes from a conservative family and is therefore not shown in the picture. Her son is picured instead.”). Most of my loans are to women for a reason. I hope when making your next loan you consider giving it to a woman.
Best wishes.
5. Louis | 2 June 2010 at 20:08
I agree. I have been begging for a small loan and no one has even ackowledged my request. I just need $15,000.00 to form 2 LLCs & a Non-Profit and set up bank accounts for each of them. I want to get my invention packaged with one LLC and one LLC to Promote my online business http://www.seniorhelperstore.com and create my foundation or Non-Profit to give grants to seniors to get computers so they can start a home based business just to earn $50.00+/day or $1500.00/mo to supplement their social security. I can make this work and and once my invention is in production of over 5000 units per month I can become a lender fro KIVA, Org. thanks, Lou
6. Bill | 2 June 2010 at 10:17
I lend mostly to men, but my lending choice is to agriculture and even more specifically animals and cattle. I have seen very few women in the large animal requests. I feel that improving the agricultural potential of communities is of greater benefit and most of the very poorest work in this area. I don’t have a bias against women (my first loan was to a woman in a non-agriculture loan).
7. Jeremy Gordon | 4 June 2010 at 12:07
Hi Bill,
Keep an eye on Juhudi Kilimo (http://www.kiva.org/partners/156). I met three clients today, all women, all brand new recipients of dairy cow loans. They should be up on the site soon.
I, too, have been thoroughly convinced of the power of agricultural loans (especially asset financing) here in Kenya.
Best,
Jeremy
8. raf manji | 1 June 2010 at 16:27
my make up (of some 400 loans) is about 80% women and 20% men. it’s just worked out that way. there is probably some bias there due to some of beliefs around the way women and men handle money. women are the real economists (from the greek oikonomos – household manager) and tend to be more focused on looking after their families and making sure the cash is spent wisely.
us men have some work to do on changing that belief
9. John A obae | 1 June 2010 at 10:05
Tell me the ways that you lend funds to indivitual men.
10. Lena Shuster | 1 June 2010 at 08:23
I think the primary reason lenders prefer female borrowers is because they assume that women are more likely to invest their income into their family, while men are likely to squander money on junk like cigarettes and alcohol. I’m not sure about how accurate this is, but i do recall reading somewhere that one strategy in improving the livelihoods of the poor in place x was to give the wives control over the family’s income. Personally, i also try to loan to both men and female, but of the 9 loans i chose to fund only 2.5 were males (the half was a married couple)
11. G. Bostelmann | 1 June 2010 at 07:37
In Guatemala there is close to 50% illiteracy – bad right? However it’s spread irregularly throughout the country, with rural women being the bottom rung of the ladder at close to 80% illiteracy. And yet these are the women that get loans, fight to get their families ahead and treat their sources carefully by paying back on time and keeping the access open. It gives them a more important standing in the family and a say in family decisions. Hopefully they will not need their daughters exclusively as cheap labor, send them to school instead and give them a chance. Furthermore almost all single parent families are headed by women, many with little education, almost all struggling to make ends meet. That’s why I choose to not lend to men, however hardworking and deserving they may be. The women have too much catching up to do.
12. EJ McK | 1 June 2010 at 05:12
I read different Kiva posts that said woman in Africa fill their loans faster then men in Central America. And that farming loans are filled slower than retailers. Now when I lend, I make sure to alternate between men and women, farmers/trades and retail. And I’m trying to lend to every country that Kiva is in (ambitious goal but I’m determined)!
13. Alan Chattaway | 1 June 2010 at 04:39
Re your comment “today in the United States, women traditionally get paid less than men.” I have read that here in Canada, and probably also in the US, although the average pay for working women is lower than the average for working men, this is because women are (probably by choice) underrepresented in occupations that are paid more to compensate for high stress, extended absence from home, physical risk, or the unpleasant nature of the work; and overrepresented in occupations that provide relationship opportunities or require relationship skills. For the exact same work and same level of experience, women are paid the same as men – hardly surprising, since it is required by law!