In part I of this blog, we explored the ways that gendered social norms manifest in women’s lives impacting their financial choices. In this second part, we delve deeper to show how norms curb women’s agency to control their financial lives and examine possible measures to address gendered norms with a community-based approach.

Gendered social norms at play within communities and households have critical bearings on women’s access to resources and their financial behaviours. An intricate combination of these two components, in turn, determines if individuals and communities are financially secure and resilient, and able to feel control over their financial lives. If financial interventions and services want to enhance women’s access to and use of resources, and shape financial behaviours, they need to dig deeper and grasp the hold of social norms on women’s decision-making process.

Lack of agency means limited opportunities to achieve financial health

Most women we met in our field visit to Odisha, expressed the limited agency they have over financial decisions at home, despite being responsible for taking care of household expenses and saving for future emergencies. Financial services, on the other hand, are often designed assuming the user has complete autonomy over their decisions, discounting the numerous social barriers faced by women (IDEO, 2019).

For instance, recent global evidence shows how digital and mobile money accounts offer women the requisite privacy and control over their finances (CFI, 2021). But such benefits for women using technology are far from universal, especially in developing countries like India where women often share the phone with their family. A woman may not want to reveal her savings or the money she transferred to her sister last month without her husband’s knowledge. Use of financial services on a shared phone is a risk to her financial privacy and a potential loss of control over her finances.

“My husband works as migrant labor. When he is back home, he asks me for money for his expenses. If he gets to know about my savings, he might spend them all. If I don’t give him money, he will start a fight. He checks my phone [messages] to see the amount in my bank account because he thinks I am hiding money from him.”

- SHG member, Ganjam, Odisha

Social expectations shape women’s financial behaviours

Invisible or unquantifiable barriers such as lack of control over their resources due to prevalent gender norms, have serious consequences on women’s financial behaviour and restrict their choices. Various studies across developing countries, including India show that seed money and loans to women entrepreneurs are quite often utilised to supplement their household expenses or support their husbands’ businesses rather than their own, explaining the lower rate of return among female borrowers (CFI, 2021). Men’s control over women’s resources highlights the deep entrenchment of existing gender norms that go unaddressed even at the institutional level despite an increase in financial inclusion of women.

In our visit, we noted that even when individual and group loans are easily accessible via the government program, many women in the SHGs do not want to avail of that credit. Their family expects them to use the loan to address immediate household needs and women fear that they will not be able to repay the credit, if it is spent in such a manner. They don’t want to risk their creditworthiness; in case they might need to borrow for any emergency or genuine business needs in the future.

“We don’t have a business idea right now. If we take a loan, we will end up spending it on household expenses. How will we repay it then? If we don’t pay back the loan, it will leave a bad mark on our SHG or those who did not pay back, and we will not be able to take loans when we might really need it.”

- SHG members, Sambalpur, Odisha

Our observations show that low-income women constantly (and rather creatively) navigate their boundaries to find answers to their problems. However, these solutions are largely sub-optimal and unable to improve their financial security, resilience, control or freedom. Only when financial systems understand these barriers, are designed to be gender-conscious, and unlock her capabilities and agency, will they find relevance in a woman’s financial world and contribute to her financial health.

Unboxing women’s measures to address norms that inspire design

Access to and use of formal financial services can provide a gateway for low-income women to increase their income, savings and wealth. But unless they connect with other facets of women’s social and economic lives, they will continue to be inert, underutilised services that find little relevance in women’s financial world.

Alternatively, when women identify their limitations and capabilities and find ways to make use of their human and social resources in combination with the limited financial assets at their disposal on their own terms, it has a cascading effect on their immediate and external environment. Not only does this process advance their financial journey, but it also creates a space for use of these financial services that can, in turn, accelerate their financial progress. With that, women start to write a new script for norms, slowly dismantling the old ones. This process is neither easy nor quick. It takes time, resources and collaborative energy from different stakeholders and institutions to turn the tide in favour of women.

Financial health as an approach focuses on building and strengthening this very internal process or journey of women that bends and eventually transforms norms by unlocking women’s own potential. It shifts the spotlight from a product-oriented, gender-adjacent strategy to a process-led, gender-conscious approach.

To put this in action, we derive inspiration for financial health solutions from women and women groups who have led change in their community. In Odisha, we uncovered some remarkable cases that highlight the power of a collective and the role of a sponsor in transforming gender norms.

Growing your tribe: Building social insurance

We visited an SHG that has been running for the last 15 years. Over the years, they took out small loans to expand their business of making masalas (ground spices) and papad (a thin crispbread or wafer, usually made of lentil flour). Now, they have found the confidence to apply for a bigger loan to buy machinery to make the spices on a bigger scale. They earn a steady annual income that supports their needs. They have expanded their business beyond the local markets often travelling to nearby cities to sell their products. Along with their business, they take care of the housework because they feel that family is still their first priority. But that does not curtail their agency in any way.

As a group, they have more control over how they utilise the loan and not spend it on household consumption. Their husband or family have no control over this loan which is secure in the SHG account. The women felt that taking a loan as a group reduced their fear of paying it back and increased their risk appetite. Together they have created reliable social insurance and a collective that gives them a sense of power and security over their income.

Making allies: Enlisting men’s support

We observed that by bringing men into their fold, women could garner more strength to change norms. We met a couple, Tara and Sanjeev who have been married for 20 years. Today, Tara heads her SHG and has been instrumental in its success at their collective livelihood. She is also perceived as a local influencer for both women and men from the village who approach her for counsel on various issues.

This journey was not easy for her. She worked hard to create a conversation around having a family and a robust savings plan with her husband. She took care of the family while also taking care of her SHG business. Over time, her husband saw the merit in having an extra income and realized the importance of his wife having a saving of her own. Today, he actively engages with other men in his community to encourage separate savings by women for long-term household needs.

Several other women SHGs and entrepreneurs who had crafted their collective or individual livelihood narrated their own unique journey to success. What stays common among those paths are the invisible fences of gendered social norms that they have tried to jump over or break down by nurturing their capabilities, collaborating with allies, negotiating with their families, and securing a social standing to prove their worth.

Our aim through the partnership with the Government of Odisha is to offer design insights and opportunities for policymakers and financial service providers to devise financial health solutions that not only consider women’s capabilities and their constraints but the place where it arises from, to create meaningful financial systems that are relevant in women’s world.

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.