A woman in a rural part of India who owns a bank account and has access to a loan for her business can safely be assumed to be financially included. It is a big cause of celebration for policymakers, donors, development agencies and service providers as the number of financially included women increase globally, but what does this financial inclusion mean for her? How does a low-income, rural woman view the financial services offered to her? What is her mental process when it comes to managing her money and her livelihood?

Let’s examine her perspective from our field visit to rural Odisha in eastern India.

Privacy of savings matters more than formal means of savings to her.

Seema is a member of her local Self-Help Group (SHG) which also helps her earn a small income through a collective livelihood activity. She has a savings account in a bank that is less than a mile from her house and she is well acquainted with the transaction process. But she still chooses to save her money in boxes at home in the kitchen where her husband doesn’t generally enter. Sometimes she parks her savings with a trusted member of her SHG for safekeeping but with easy access.

Seema values the privacy of her savings the most, which is taken away when she visits her bank branch. Her fear is that she will face emotional and verbal abuse from her husband if he finds out that she has kept away some of the money she withdrew from the bank. It is a common belief in Seema’s community that a woman should not hide any savings from her husband.

“I hide some of my income in different boxes in the house. That way my husband does not know my entire income and can’t spend it all.”

- SHG member, Sambalpur District, Odisha

Thoughts for design: How might financial services protect her from the sanctions she is likely to face in such a scenario?

Fear of social sanctions compounds the risk of a loan for her.

Meena is a mother whose aim is to save for her children’s higher education in the city. To make that dream come true, she runs a small business from her home that gets her a steady monthly income and a regular saving that is tucked away for future needs. But Meena is in a dilemma. Through the government’s program, she has easy access to a loan to expand her business and earn more. It is not an easy decision for her to make. She says that unlike in the case of men, the community will look down upon her because a woman should not burden her family with her debt.

Meena fears that if she is not able to return the loan in time, her in-laws will blame her for the debt and stop her from running the business completely. With that income gone she might lose her dream of educating her children and surrender the little agency that she has earned in her own home.

“As a woman, it is scarier and riskier to take a loan, compared to a man. We are not only answerable to the bank, but to our family and community as well."

- SHG member, Bhubaneswar, Odisha

Thoughts for design: How might we rethink of credit that helps women feel secure in availing loans for their small business?

Safe spaces are preferred over the ease of transaction for her.

Durga is a newly married woman who prefers walking to her trusted local post office to deposit her money after selling vegetables in the market. She can easily deposit the money with the local banking agent in the market, but her problem is that the banking agent is a man.

She worries that if she visits him frequently, Durga’s relatives will question her integrity and she might bring shame on her family. Social norms in her village dictate that a young woman should not interact with other men unless accompanied by her husband or family. On the other hand, the post office might be a bit of a walk for her, but it offers a safe space for her transactions as most women in her village visit it for different reasons.

“I prefer to visit my local post office for savings. It is familiar and no one questions me when I visit.”

- SHG member, Ganjam District, Odisha

Thoughts for design: How might we deliver financial services in easy-to-access spaces that make women feel safe?

Move the spotlight from product to process.

In all these cases, women are financially included with access to formal financial services, but these services aren’t necessarily relevant or tailored to their needs. It is no surprise then that of the 77 percent of women account holders in India, almost 40 percent of the accounts lie dormant (Global Findex 2017). For most rural, low-income women, these accounts seem to be inert products that don’t understand their mental process of planning, saving or borrowing.

These cases and statistics go on to indicate:

1. Structural changes such as owning bank accounts, alone are not enough to secure women’s financial lives. There is a compelling need to unpack the hidden tenets that shape women’s financial behaviours and impact their lives.
2. Just because a woman is financially included does not imply that she has the ability and agency to manage day-to-day expenses, save for financial emergencies, and have control of her financial life.

Unlike men, women, and especially low-income women, lead extraordinarily complex social and financial lives. Her financial behaviour – how she plans, spends, saves and borrows – is highly conditional on what sanctions will she face – from her husband, family and her community– if she were to break a social norm.

The invisible fences in the journey of financial health

These cases, and many more that we observed in the field, go on to show that for a woman, achieving financial health is like playing an infinite strategy game. In this game, she must overcome obstacles and reach the next stage by prioritizing resources and making allies.

At every stage, women must get past the social norms to open possibilities of driving change before moving to the next one. She must find an ally in her family to support her. She must prove that she has the capacity to run a business successfully to formal institutions who tend to think otherwise. She must constantly negotiate boundaries to bend or transform the norms that block her at every stage.

Financial interventions and services can act as a power booster for women, if they are designed to shape not just behaviours but the norms that drive them. Only then will women move from access to absorption of financial services paving the way to achieve financial security, resilience and control in their lives. Moving the spotlight from the destination to this complex yet remarkable journey of women is the way to create meaningful financial systems that work for women.

Read part II of this blog that explores how social norms curb women’s agency to control their financial lives and the possible measures to address gendered norms.

About the Mission Shakti Living Lab

UNCDF’s Centre for Financial Health has partnered with the State Government of Odisha in India under their flagship program – Mission Shakti. The program aims to empower women entrepreneurs socially and economically by organizing them in self-help groups (SHGs). Presently, over seven million women, organized into six-hundred thousand SHGs throughout Odisha, benefit from the program. Under the initiative, almost all women members have access to a bank account in the nearest bank branch.

Over the next four years of the program, with this partnership, UNCDF aims to improve the financial health outcomes of 3.5 million low-income rural women and women entrepreneurs and build 10,000 women-led micro-enterprises in the state.