Does Microfinance Disrupt Kenyan Family Structure?
By Eric Bell,
Fellow at Re-Vision Labs
The other day my mother, a professor of family stuff at IUPUI, conveyed to me an interesting account of microlending from some Kenyan women who were visiting scholars in her program. The women criticized microlending’s emphasis on lending to women because it was making men superfluous in their own families. With women as the caretakers and the breadwinners, the men had no role in the family and would frequently leave. Thus, the accusation is that microfinance institutions are destructive to family structures.
From Flickr user theeyesview; Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic
This sounds like oddly misdirected criticism to me (“MFIs are too good at empowering women”?), but it also seems like an interesting perspective given that it comes from a group of Kenyan women, and it’s a side effect that we might not have predicted. I have no idea if it represents a widely held view or a minority of detractors. It seems to me that any substantial undermining of the status quo will inevitably produce discomfort and downsides, but I think such unease is on the whole both desirable and expected. At the same time our focus is the community, and we might do well to be careful not to destroy the whole in our efforts to bring empowerment and education to its historically disadvantaged members.
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