Posted by: Taea Calcut
In the past year, over 200 MFIs around the world have submitted social performance reports to MIX. Among the questions asked in the report are those related to institutional policies and programs that aim to empower both female clients and personnel. How, for instance, do MFIs identify constraints women face in their communities and tailor products and services to women's needs? Do MFIs provide non-financial services that complement and enhance the benefits of financial services offered to women? How do MFIs challenge gender inequality within their own workplaces, ensuring the skills development and promotion of talented female staff?
Today's post marks the first in a series that will examine some of the issues raised in our analysis of these key gender indicators. We start with assessing an MFI’s social mission. How have MFIs explicitly declared their commitment to serving women and does that explicit commitment affect an MFI’s degree of outreach to female clients?
If social performance is about translating an MFI’s mission into practice, then having a clear mission statement is vital. MIX’s social performance report assesses an MFI’s social mission related to outreach to women in three ways. First, it examines if an MFI mentions women in its mission statement. Second, it asks whether an MFI's target market includes women. Finally, it examines whether an MFI lists women's empowerment among its primary development objectives.
Graph 1: Gender Focus among a Sample of 134 Reporting MFIs
As can be seen in Graph 1, MIX social performance report data reveals that 110 (82%) of 134 MFIs sampled claim to target women clients. 77 MFIs (57%) include women’s empowerment among their development objectives. However, significantly fewer MFIs -- 27 of 134 (20%) -- include the word “women” in their mission statement.
Graph 2: Relationship between Gender Focus and Female Borrowers
How does an MFI’s adoption of a gender focus affect its outreach to women? As can be seen in Graph 2, the 115 MFIs that declared at least one type of gender focus had women composing 70% of their total borrowers on average. Meanwhile, the remaining 19 MFIs that did not report a gender focus of any kind had women composing only 40% of their total borrowers.
Graph 3: Relationship between Gender Focus and Female Borrowers by Type
Looking at the relationship between the percentage of female borrowers and the gender focus type in Graph 3, it appears that MFIs that explicitly include women in their mission typically reach the greatest number of women, who composed 83% of borrowers on average. That average increases to 85% of total borrowers when MFIs include both women in their mission and women’s empowerment among their objectives.
This data begs the question: If MFIs are committed to serving women – who, as we mentioned in a post earlier this week, compose a disproportionate number of the world’s poor and are often excluded from formal financial systems at higher rates than men – have they assessed the lens with which they guide their institution’s decision-making? And, as suggested by the numbers above, is the most important of these “lenses” an MFI’s mission statement, from which gender-focused strategies and operations can be drawn? If so, it appears critical that MFIs take care in explicitly including women in their mission statement to provide a road map for their social performance goals.
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