Alkire, S., Meinzen-Dick, R., Peterman, A., Quisumbing, A., Seymour, G., and Vaz, A., 2013, The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index, General background document on issues in our research matrix, OPHI Working Paper.58, OPHI, Oxford.

2.3 Direct actions in communities

2.3.5 Micro finance

Recommendation: 1. Take into account substantial insights that can affect microfinance provision success:

• Provision of a broad range of micro finance products including package with diversified interest rates and loan periods
• Women’s specific finance needs and habits at different life cycle moments and in accordance with their physical mobility opportunities (some are able to be more mobile than others)
• Identification of innovative ways of reaching borrowers, especially in remote, rural areas and/or where they have low educations levels.  E.g. example from Malawi where a biometric smart card is used that enables non-literate customers can open and manage a savings account using only their fingerprints for identification.

Reference: Alkire, S., Meinzen-Dick, R., Peterman, A., Quisumbing, A., Seymour, G., and Vaz, A., 2013, The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index, General background document on issues in our research matrix, OPHI Working Paper.58, OPHI (Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative), Oxford.

Evidence sample: Women’s life cycle and their priorities and circumstances also need to be taken account of when targeting credit. In addition financial services should offer opportunities to save. Meinzen – Dick and Quisumbing (2012) argue that women should not be locked into micro-finance alone – but need to a ‘ladder’ of finance. Women also need access to more ways of making and receiving payments such as through mobile phones. This is particularly important for situations where women’s mobility is restricted, and women rely on family and friends to access banks and markets. An internet search found no papers or impact studies regarding disaggregated use of mobile banking.