A micro­cre­dit firm called Okio­cre­dit has com­pleted a study that looks at the per­cent­ages of women who are in poverty from coun­try to coun­try. The study finds that women make up 70% of the poverty pop­u­la­tion, and it remains around that per­cent­age regard­less of nation.

Okio­cre­dit per­forms loans in the coun­tries of Bul­garia, Kenya, Peru and the Philip­pines. We found the story about the study in the busi­ness web­site, BDaily.

Dr Shobha Arole, Oiko­cre­dit board pres­i­dent said: “A lack of access to basic edu­ca­tion, eco­nomic and prop­erty rights means 70% of the world’s poor are female.

“These are the groups who are mar­gin­alised, vic­tims of vio­lence ad vul­ner­a­ble in every sense of the word.”

Oiko­cre­dit offers micro­fi­nance to fam­i­lies in poverty around the globe, reach­ing 69 dif­fer­ent coun­tries, with 16.8 mil­lion peo­ple assisted by the pri­vate coop­er­a­tive finan­cial insti­tu­tion since it was estab­lished in 1975.
…
One of the prob­lems high­lighted by the report is that even if micro­cre­dit is taken out in a women’s name, she will not nec­es­sar­ily have con­trol over it.

The report said: “It is pos­si­ble that a hus­band or male fam­ily mem­bers use the money, with the woman tak­ing the micro­cre­dit sim­ply because she is more eligible.

“Some writ­ers state that women, instead of ben­e­fit­ing, actu­ally suf­fer if they have access to micro­fi­nance funds. It is sug­gested that their hus­bands may see this as encour­age­ment to decrease their con­tri­bu­tion to the household.”

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