Transforming women's roles in Pakistan's rural sector: Donor policy and local response: Fid-Bau Portal

Transforming women's roles in Pakistan's rural sector: Donor policy and local response

Saulniers, Suzanne Smith

Abstract Faced with a donor policy from the International Fund for Agricultural Development to enhance social equity in access to credit for cottage industries and livestock enterprise development in a larger agricultural development project funded by the Asian Development Bank and Government of Pakistan, the Agricultural Development Bank of Pakistan had to develop a scheme to extend credit to clients with no previous credit history, no formal credit management experience and sometimes no income-generating knowledge. Introducing a women's credit delivery service met, not unexpectedly, with institutional barriers and cultural resistance from rural families. Based on a survey of women in Gujranwala District, Punjab Province and a diary of the first 18 months of project implementation, this paper chronicles the ways the conflict was resolved in setting up a rural credit delivery model for women and examines some cultural, legal and social constraints to its introduction. The results attest to the importance of including men as well as women in promoting women, a rural development strategy which could have application well beyond the Muslim world.