MONEY
Where credit is due Banking guarantees fo r women
A CCORDING to the United Nations, women perform 66 per cent of all work in the world but receive only 10 per cent of the income. Why?
Women are, of necessity, good managers; they have to be if they and their families are to'survive. They are used to scrimping and saving and making ends meet but once they start to put these skills to work outside the home, they come up against problems. For here survival is institutionalised. If you want to start up a business, however small, you need money — and who’s going to make a loan to a woman?
At the 1975 Women’s Conference in Mexico, the problems facing women entrepreneurs in developing countries were discussed. As a result, Women’s World banking was set up and is now in its second year of operation.
Women’s World Banking is a nonprofit organisation operating from New York. Its function is not to lend money but to act as a guarantor for women who need to borrow. It will, therefore, go to a local bank to speak on behalf of a woman who is trying to start up a business: ‘We think this woman’s idea is sound and if you will accept 25 per cent of the risk, we will accept the remaining 75 per cent’.
small-scale projects including a craft centre, a chicken and egg factory and a bicycle repair shop.
Although an idea may be commercially viable, many women will find it difficult to raise the start-up cash and if they do manage to raise it very often it is through a money lender who may charge interest at 200 per cent. It is these women that the organisation is trying to help.
The initial action must always be at local level. An affiliate of Women’s World Banking is formed, perhaps by a women’s co-op. Then, if a project is thought to be financially sound, the affiliate will accept 25 per cent of the risk, the lending bank will be encouraged to accept a further 25 per cent and when this has been done, Women’s World Banking will come in to guarantee the remaining 50 per cent of the loan.
The sums involved are generally small, often not more than $10,000. To qualify for a loan guarantee, a woman must undertake to do some training in management and marketing — areas which traditionally have been outside her experience and which is partly the reason why banks are reluctant to lend to women. Women’s World Banking gets its money from the sale of long-term debentures as well as from grants from the UN Development Programme, the governments of Sweden and the Netherlands, the Rockefeller Foundation and the United Methodist Church. It will not seek financial help from the banks as it prefers to retain some degree of independence.
By doing this, they hope to encourage local banks to participate in enterprises organised specifically by women. At the moment it is operating in India, Central America and Africa backing a number of
Mary Russell
Further information from: Michaela Walshe, P O Box 506, Grand Central Station, New York, N Y 10017.
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Soul poaching American evangelical efforts corrode local culture 1 L J EATHENS are at a premium these
* ■ days in Papua New Guinea, so much so that latter-day religious zealots are tripping over themselves and their converts to bring the ‘true word of God’. The established churches - the Catholics, the Anglicans, the Lutherans and the Uniting are getting a little niggled since the poaching of souls from their historical territories is not welcomed,’ so says Nuigini Nius correspondent Kevin Ricketts recently.
No-one seems to know just how many churches, missionaries and weird sects are operating in PNG - the last official study by the UN in the early 1970s put the figure at 48 - it may have doubled since then.
While the good work that has been carried out in the fields of health and education by the older established churches can't be denied, the motives of some of the recently arrived gospel or pentecostal churches are highly suspect. Refugees from the West, especially the US, such religious fanatics find the average Papua New Guinean just ripe for conversion.
Protein deficiency in children is a serious problem in some areas and domestic pigs are often the main protein source. Unfortunately Seventh Day Adventists preach against the consumption of pork, and the fish stocks of the River Sepik have been significantly depleted since the river has been clogged by Salvinia. This virulent water weed was introduced by missionaries as shading for the pools of their commercial crocodile farm and subsequently escaped into the nearby river. Predatory grasshoppers are currently being released in the hope that they will gobble up the Salvinia.
Destruction of the rich Papua New Guinea culture has been hastened by the missionaries who have been burning down the 'pagan' Haus Tambarans, the traditional spirit houses of the people of the East Sepik region. These splendidly carved and brightly painted structures are rapidly being replaced by churches clad in corrugated iron roofs. The people are then forced to adopt a religion which is inappropriate to their way of life and persuaded to swop their traditional dress for Western clothes. These clothes remain unwashed as soap is a rare luxury and eventually harbour body lice and scabies and other aggravating skin diseases - the traditional arse grass was changed daily.
Recently there have been encouraging signs that the people of PNG are beginning to stand up for their rights, when parents of children who had been told that their traditional dress was immoral by their missionary teachers turned up in force for a sit-in at the Mission in Tambul. But they have a long way to go
Sam Page
NEW INTERNATIONALIST, NOVEMBER 1983
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