Women in cooperatives
"[4] Cooperatives allow women who might have been isolated and working individually to band together and create economies of scale as well as increase their own bargaining power in the market.
[7] Another principal benefits of cooperative work is that it allows women the opportunity to gain a decent wage while still leaving time and freedom for other responsibilities important to them such as caring for children and families.
Karim highlights the negative tactics often used in loan recovery, in which group responsibility plays a large role and women's honor is publicly shamed if they default.
[9] Similarly, after conducting a 2008 study of small women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh, Jahiruddin et al. deduct that microcredit can even worsen poverty of borrowers in certain conditions.
One-fourth of cases from a survey, spanning 35 villages and including 320 microcredit borrowers, showed no improvement in economic status of the borrowers, and in 6% of the cases poverty actually worsened due to various reasons like investment in activities that are slow to start generating revenue or encountering emergency circumstances that led to the use of the loan for other purposes.
[10] Cooperatives offer a way out of these negatives situations that microcredit puts women in due to the communal net and support that they provide through rough times.
[11] In Africa, though women account for roughly 80% of food production, they receive less than 10% of credit offered to small-scale farmers and only 7% of agricultural extension services.
[12] By permitting women farmers to join as a cooperative, individuals are better able to acquire inputs, production services, and marketing for their produce.
Furthermore, there is “solid evidence” that membership in a cooperative enhances productivity, income, and quality of life for the person involved, as well as the greater community.
In Africa, where cooperatively organized care provision has in many cultural contexts been an intrinsic part of the social fabric, it is today gaining visibility, and increasing in the range of services provided and level of formality.
[15] Savings and credit cooperatives (SACCOs) are much more accessible to women than standard banks, especially in rural areas, due to the fact that they are “locality-based,” making them more culturally sensitive and less intimidating.
[16] During times of conflict, cooperatives may be most advantageous because they enable members to accumulate savings, pool resources, access credit, and share risks.
[3] In Latin America, machismo ideology permeates the culture and gives women virtually all the responsibility in child care, domestic work, and other subsistence activities.
[19] Brenda Rosenbaum says that, "However hard they work, women at this level of poverty find it difficult to overcome the gender constraints imposed on them.
"[20] Many women get trapped by pressures and criticism from family members and neighbors that believe the independence cooperatives encourage is "immodest" or too "forward," even to the extent of fathers or husbands forbidding involvement.
Although savings and credit cooperatives exist in developing countries to avoid dealing with microfinance institutions and are often the recipients of support services from the government, many are still male-dominated and discourage women from joining.
[27] This essential step should be partnered with other legal means such as "mainstreaming" gender equality into all cooperative policies, bylaws, statements, initiatives, and programs, etc.
In countries where women are particularly disadvantaged under the laws, Nippierd argues that cooperatives should join in "national coalitions and alliances with gender advocacy organizations and other civil society organizations to lobby governments for equal rights (especially in property and asset ownership) and an effective legal framework and institutions that foster gender equality.
