Taking Gender Seriously: Towards a Gender Justice Protocol for Financial Services
This paper discusses gender issues and empowerment throughout program design to benefit women and improve the longer term financial and organizational sustainability of services. It proposes a draft Gender Justice Framework Protocol to act as a catalyst for serious debate about the way forward. Women's economic empowerment at the individual level has potentially significant contributions. Increasing women's access to microfinance services, their visibility as agents of economic growth and their voice as economic actors in policy decisions can potentially lead to:
- Women's economic empowerment;
- Increased household wellbeing;
- Wider social and political empowerment.
Finally, the study concludes that mainstreaming gender issues by financial service providers, and value chain analysis and development would help create a favorable environment for womens empowerment. Microfinance networks must lobby, garnering support on issues like womens property rights, informal sector protection and violence which affect their clients, and in turn, their sustainability as well as the whole development process.
