Banker to the Poor by Muhammad Yunus, Alan Jolis Page A

women constituted less than 1 percent of all the borrowers in Bangladesh prior to Grameen. The banking system was created for men.
    It was my anger about this situation that initially prompted me to commit to having at least 50 percent of our experimental project loans granted to women. But we soon discovered new socioeconomic reasons to focus on women. The more money we lent to poor women, the more I realized that credit given to a woman brings about change faster than when given to a man.
    In Bangladesh, hunger and poverty are more women's issues than men's. Women experience hunger and poverty more intensely than men. If one of the family members has to starve, it is an unwritten law that it will be the mother. The mother will also suffer the traumatic experience of not being able to breast-feed her infant during the times of famine and scarcity. Poor women in Bangladesh have the most insecure social standing. A husband can throw his wife out any time he wishes. He can divorce her merely by repeating, "I divorce thee," three times. And if he does, she will be disgraced and unwanted in her parents' house. Despite these adversities, it is evident that destitute women adapt quicker and better to the self-help process than men. Though they cannot read or write and have rarely been allowed to step out of their homes alone, poor women see further and are willing to work harder to lift themselves and their families out of poverty. They pay more attention, prepare their children to live better lives, and are more consistent in their performance than men. When a destitute mother starts earning an income, her dreams of success invariably center around her children. A woman's second priority is the household. She wants to buy utensils, build a stronger roof, or find a bed for herself and her family. A man has an entirely different set of priorities. When a destitute father earns extra income, he focuses more attention on himself. Thus money entering a household through a woman brings more benefits to the family as a whole.
    If the goals of economic development include improving the general standard of living, reducing poverty, creating dignified employment opportunities, and reducing inequality, then it is natural to work through women. Not only do women constitute the majority of the poor, the underemployed, and the economically and socially disadvantaged, but they more readily and successfully improve the welfare of both children and men. Studies comparing how male borrowers use their loans versus female borrowers, consistently show this to be the case.
    It was not easy to focus our efforts almost exclusively on lending to women. The first and most formidable opposition came from the husbands, who generally wanted the loans for themselves. The religious leaders were very suspicious of us. And the moneylenders saw us as a direct threat to their authority in the village. These objections I had expected, but what surprised me was to hear educated civil servants and professionals arguing against us. They contended that it made no sense to lend money to women while so many men were jobless and without income. Or they argued that women would only pass the loans on to their husbands and would wind up even more exploited than they were before. One official of our central bank even wrote me a menacing letter demanding that I "explain fully and immediately why a high percentage of your borrowers are women." Curiously, my reply asking whether the central bank had ever asked the other banks in the country why they have such a high percentage of male borrowers went unanswered.
    In the beginning, we were unsure how to attract women borrowers. Bengali women rarely, if ever, borrow money from banks. I could have put up a billboard saying:
     
     
    ATTENTION ALL WOMEN:
WELCOME TO OUR BANK
FOR A SPECIAL LOAN PROGRAM
FOR WOMEN
     
     
    This billboard might have received media coverage or free publicity but would never have attracted women borrowers.