Saving as a Path for Female Empowerment and Entrepreneurship in Rural Peru

Abstract

Much research has identified the difficulties of promoting women's empowerment using microcredit, but there has been little research on the potential for empowerment from promoting women's savings. We address this gap through a qualitative study of three women's savings programmes in the Highlands of Peru. The results reveal changes in several domains of women's lives (economic, personal and relational), emphasizing that these programmes enable them to think about the future, expand their social support networks, and become entrepreneurs. We conclude that savings interventions have considerable advantage over microcredit programmes for facilitating female empowerment and that the merits of these interventions go far beyond financial inclusion with significant impacts on women's psychosocial well-being and broader empowerment.