Credit
Programs, Women's Income And Violence:
Ethnographic
Findings
Despite
the lack of effect of women’s contribution to family support
on domestic violence in the multivariate analysis,
evidence from the four credit program villages in the
ethnographic study suggests that both the loans and the social
dimensions of credit programs may help to inhibit violence
against women .
Bringing home a resource that benefits men can protect women
from violence. This is illustrated
in the case of S.
She and
her husband were so desperately poor
that local shopkeepers refused even to
let them buy a small amount of kerosene oil on credit,
and they were often forced to eat in the dark .After S, joined
BRAC and received
her first loan she mortgaged in a small
piece of land . After giving the landowner his share at harvest time they still had three
maunds of paddy,
more than they had even dreamed of having in the house at one
time. This was enough
to last them through the lean period, and enough to make them
credit-worthy ( others have
since given them loans for cultivation) . Both she and
her close relatives told the researchers that her husband
stopped beating her after she joined BRAC and their economic
situation improved.
Although
women who invest their credit program loans in their own
enterprises and make independent contributions to their families
support may experience greater levels of empowerment then women
who do not control their own loans as
suggested earlier, the effect of credit programs in reducing
violence against women does not seem to hinge on their talent to
generate independent income from their loans. Rather, it appears
that violence against women diminishes when the women bring home
a resource ( in this case the loan money ), regardless of who
actually uses the money
.
Even
though her ability to engage in independent economic activities
and contribute directly to her
family’s support may be pre empted, when a man
appropriates his wife’s loans, there is some acknowledgment
that she is the source of this benefit and this improves her
position in the household. Several women told the researchers
that other members of the family were kinder and more respectful
around the time that they were supposed to receive a new loan
.In some cases also, the husband or other family members
provided assistance with cooking, childcare or other domestic
tasks to make it easier for the participant to attend meetings.
when a woman
joins a credit program certain things happen right away . Women
immediately get public exposure when they attend the
mandatory weekly meetings of the local credit group. In
addition to providing public exposure, the group meetings
also foster support networks outside of the family, which may
provide sources of intervention or sanctuary . These immediate benefits are
experienced by all members, regardless of whether their husbands
appropriate their loans, and regardless of whether
they ever manage to earn
enough independent income to make a substantial
contribution to their families support. For those who do
become involved in
independent income generating activities, it may take
considerable time for the activity
to generate profits and as the woman’s
income increases there is often a period of struggle fore
control over it, which may be associated with increased violence..
Violence
And Women's Empowerment
In
the study villages it appears that redefinition of women’s
roles and status in conjunction with their increased involvement
in the cash economy is often accompanied by an escalation of
violence by men against women. Case studies suggest that women
who earn modest amounts of income and/or have some independent
assets of their own are more likely to be beaten than women who
have nothing of their own and are completely dependent on
their husbands. Since they have nothing, the latter have
nothing to fight over and their is nothing to take away from
them. Those who are
least empowered
and most dependent tend to be so insecure that they go
extremes to avoid provoking their husbands .
As women begin to earn independent incomes and increase
their mobility and autonomy
conflicts often develop, particularly if their is no
mitigating influence such as a credit program. The
conflicts have to do with issues
of control over women’s increased propensity to defend
themselves against what they see as unfair domination and
exploitation .
Expanding
women’s access to economic opportunities and resources does
not necessarily make them less vulnerable to domestic violence,
at least not right
away . Levels of violence against women can vary considerably
from village to village and greater involvement of women in
income generation is sometimes associated with greater violence
Among the six study villages the highest level of violence
against women was in the village where it was most apparent that
transformations in gender roles were underway .
Sixty percent of all women in this village (based on a
survey of al married women of reproductive age) said their
husbands had beaten them during the preceding year. As shown in
Fig. I this village also had the highest percentage of women who
were contributing to family supp9rt (41%). In contrast, the
village with the smallest percentage of women who said that they
had been beaten in the past year (14%) had very few women who
were contributing to family support (10%) .Both of these were
BRAC villages. There was
frequent conflict over frights to income and assets in
the most violent village and 33% of the women said that their
husbands or other
relatives had seized their money
of assets without their permission
during the year preceding the interview . Only 2% of the
women from the least violent village said this. Asked to explain
the high incidences of wife beating in his village, an elderly
man from most violent village said:
Our
wives would not be eaten so much if they were obedient and
followed our orders, but women do not listen to us and so they
get beaten often,
The
most empowered women typically emerge from a period of conflict
with a new definition of their roles and status in the
household. One example of this is M, a BRAC member who works
outside of the home, in a rice processing enterprise. She now
controls and invests her own income, and pays for her own health
care despite once having been beaten for doing so. She told one
of the researchers:
My
husband used to beat me up and take my money. Now he can beat me
a thousand times and I won’t give him my money. I tell him.
“you had better not beat me too much – I can live without
you !
Some
of the women in the most empowered village had achieved a
favorable redefinition of their
roles and status within their h9omes. these tended to be
women who were the most successful economically, and /or whose
incomes provided most of the family’s
support ( the husband’s earning were inadequate or
intermittent ). This suggests that there may in fact be an
association between women’s contributions t0 family support
and reduced violence, but only when women’s economic
contributions reach high levels and that high economic
contributions are so rare that this did mot show up in the
multivariate analysis. Most Grameen Bank and BRAC women have
relatively modest incomes; in the survey sample only 20% were
providing half or more of the family’s support. Apparently
credit programs protect women against violence to some extent
even though the women may not have reached the stage of economic
independence that may be associated with lower violence.
The
effect of credit programs in reducing violence against women is
particularly interesting because, for the most part, the
programs do not deal directly with violence against women. The
ethnographer in one of the study villages reported.
During
my two –year stay in the village I never once heart any
protest against domestic violence in the Center meetings.
Grameen Bank never wants to know whether their husbands beat the
women when they ask for money to pay the installments (in cases
where the husband appropriates part or all of the loan money for
his own use). When the Center Chief was laid up after a beating
by hey husband the band staff didn’t ask her anything about
it, although (surely) he could guess the reason. J, the center
Chief says, “When our husbands beat us we do not tell Sir (the
local Grameen staff). How can we tell Sir about this shameful thing? If he asks (what
the problem is) we tell him something else. And when he hears
that a member is sick he doesn’t ask any more questions.
Interviews
with credit program field staff suggest that they have an
intuitive understanding of the deeply rooted connection between
men’s violence against women and patriarchy. They sense that
speaking out against domestic violence would be perceived as a
challenge to men’s rights over their wives and thus, could
jeopardize the program’s acceptance by the community.
Because of this they tend to avoid the issue, but occasionally
kit is difficult for them to do so . In one case a member’s
husband beat his wife while a Grameen Band meeting was in
progress, in front of all of those assembled. He wanted the
money she had saved to pay the loan installment for gambling.
The bank worker
admonished him saying “You have no sense of decency, beating
your wife in front of us
! You must repay the money immediately!”
The
same band worker described another case, in which a husband
dragged his wife into another room and beat her while the credit
group meeting was going on. In this case the bank worker said to
the man’s father, who was sitting nearby, “ What kind of son
do you have, beating his wife in front of us?
If he needs to beat her so badly lit him wait until we
have gone!”
When
we discussed the Grameen Bank worker’s responses in these
cases our research team was divided. Two members initially
argued that the credit program staff, being male, were
identifying with their own gender and at some deep level
accepted the idea that men had the right to control their wives.
They felt that the band staff should have gone further in
defending the women. Others argued that under the circumstances
this would have been foolish, that at least the man said
something to embarrass the husband, that the message was
“don’t beat your wife,” and that words ‘in front of
us “ were necessary to soften the challenge to the
man’s authority over his wife. Another interpretation is that intervening further might have raised suspicion of
a sexual liaison between the band worker and the women. Men’s
violence against women undoubtedly is a sensitive issue .It is
not addressed in the orientation and
training of credit program field staff, except
indirectly, insofar as the staff are told to encourage members
to support one another. Lacking direct guidance and psserce8ving
that attempts to intervene in domestic violence could backfire;
it is not surprising that the field staff tend to avoid the
issue.
CONCLUSION
The
findings of this study draw attention to the pervasiveness of
men’s violence against women in rural society in Bangladesh
and suggest that along with expanding employment and other
income gener- ating opportunities for women, interventions may
be needed to support women who are subjected to men’s
violence. Credit programs appear to reduce domestic violence be
channeling resources to families through women and by organizing
women into solidarity groups that meet regularly and make the
women’s lives more visible. These strategies could be employed
in other types of programs.
Building on
the success of their existing methods, credit programs many want
to consider more
direct interventions to reduce men’s
violence against women, starting with
open discussions of the problem in group meetings,
Providing assistance to those in difficulty and standing up
against injustice are two of the “Sixteen Decisions”
that Grameen Band members must
memorize and are asked to commit themselves to, and BRAC
also promotes these general principles,. While both Grameen and BRAC can
cite examples of collective confrontation
by groups of women in response to violence against group members by their husbands, these are rare examples;
collective resistance to men’s
violence could be
explicitly encouraged to a greater extent as specific examples
of ways to put the
decisions into practice. Given the widespread acceptance
of men’s violence
against their wives, a meaningful attempt
to intervene probably would require extensive
aware-ness-raising efforts
directed at program staff and husbands and families of women in
credit programs, as well as at the women themselves ( Huq, 1995)
. Attempts to promote attitudinal change may
need to be reinforced with interventions such as legal
aid for women . BRAC’s involvement in education and health
programs could provide an opportunity to disseminate
anti-violence messages in communities through various avenues
and to influence the next generation through its nonformal
schools .
The
fact that women may be subjected
to physical abuse by their husbands when they seek
treatment for heath pr problems needs to be confronted by health
and family planning
programs, even though the solution to this problem obviously
will not be simple.
Some nongovernmental organizations
in Bangladesh are
attempting to address the issue of violence against women
through consciousness raising,,
legal advocacy at the national level and legal aid; Ain O
Shalish, Kendra , Nijera Kori, Nari Pokkho, Saptagram and Mahila Parishad
are a few examples.
Such efforts to
strengthen rights and
protections for women in
the legal code and to improve women’s access to the legal
system may gradually
reduce women’s susceptibility to men’s violence ,if
pursued on a large scale.
The
success of Bangladesh national family planning program ij
radically transforming reproductive norms may provide a modes
for addressing the problem of women’s social subordination, of which violence is one aspect.In addition to providing
contraceptive supplies and services on a large scale, the family
planning program
had made extensive use of mass media and interpersonal
communication to promote the small family norm . The
result has been a dramatic and rapid transformation in attitudes
and behavior related
to fertility. To a limited extent television and radio are
beginning to be used by the Bangladesh
Government, with assistance from UNICEF, to promote the
idea that girl children should
be treated equally to
boys in allocation of
food and education . Nongovernmental
organizations have begun to use mass media
to condemn the institution
of dowry and
the violence against young brides that too often results from
conflicts over dowry
. Expansion and sustainment
of such
efforts in order to
produce an
impact comparable to that of
the family planning program
will require a strong political
commitment at the highest levels
of government, as well as among development
donors. For this level of commitment to take shape,
further data gathering and
consciousness raising
is needed to
reveal the extent of men’s violence
against women,
to expose the links between violence
and other aspects of women’s subordination, and to
recognize the magnitude of suffering and diminishment
of human potential
that gender based
subordination entails.
