SAVING FOR CHANGE AND WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT
A few months after the launch of Saving for Change in Guatemala, we carried out a study in Alta Verapaz and Baja Vera- paz to establish a baseline against which we could measure change.
One key finding was that while economic indicators such as wealth were the same between those who chose to join groups and those who did not, “women who join Saving for Change groups appear to be more empowered than non- members.”33 Women who choose to join Saving for Change tend to be more socially active, to be less likely to need permission from a partner or father to visit friends outside their village, to participate in community or church groups, and to have more experience managing finances (saving or borrowing).34Everywhere we worked required an incredible effort to get the first group going. Not until the first group of risktaking savers got their money back at share-out were others willing to join.
Angelica Mazariegos, supervisor of the Association of Community Health Services (Asociacion de Servicios Comunitarios de Salud, ASECSA), explained, “There were a lot of women in these communities, but when it was time to sign up, only a few were interested.”35 In Guatemala, this hesitation to join showed a healthy skepticism of outsider interventions that was nurtured by past experiences with failed or false projects.
In Guatemala, we found another barrier to group participation: husbands. Many men there prohibited their wives from participating in women’s collective action and even threatened them with violence.
Supervisor Eleazar Timotea Castro of the Teaching Institute for Sustainable Development (Instituto de Ensenanza para el Desarrollo Sostenible, IEPADES), one of Oxfam America’s NGO partners in Guatemala, told the story of how a whole group united around one woman whose husband forbade her to participate in Saving for Change:
About six months ago a woman from Chujomil had issues with her husband, even though her husband was in the US.
He would tell her that she didn’t need to be part of a group. She would send the savings without telling her husband, but he still pressured her, he had control over her from afar. She eventually could not take it anymore and told the group that she could not continue because of her husband and because her in-laws had control over her as well, and that’s why she was leaving the group. But the women were supportive and helped nurture a different vision of what washappening. They told her that the group is an opportunity and that her husband doesn’t know all the problems we have resolved as a group because he doesn’t always send you money on time. [She] cried and cried. 36 She would not stop crying. The whole group went to her in-laws to explain what the group was, but [she] left. [She] cried because she wanted to participate.
Her friends encouraged her to have the courage to tell her husband that she has the right to participate and that the group is an opportunity. [She] and her children talked on the phone. Now her husband sends her money to save. She is good with the group and thankful of the other women who gave her the courage and the support to resolve the problem. We have a lot of cases like this one.37
This story did not take place in a vacuum. In a comprehensive review of studies of gender-based violence in Guatemala, Karen Musalo, director of the California-based Center for Gender and Refugee Studies (CGRS), demonstrates that Guatemala today is undergoing a crisis.38 Musalo concludes, “Violence against women has become ‘normalized’ in Guatemala and is broadly accepted despite the efforts of human rights and women’s groups to overcome this widespread 39
acquiescence. 39
In a rural area where women are generally confined to their homes and expected to follow their husbands’ direction on basic financial decisions, a group like Saving for Change may be quite radical. Women’s groups, which allow members space to make decisions and act for themselves, can be sites of safety, support, and resistance to this status quo.
Saving for Change creates a materially useful reason for women to leave the household and meet and socialize with other women.The promotoras and volunteers who work with Saving for Change know and act on this—they use Saving for Change as a tool to organize women in their communities. “The money, the savings, is a hook to get everyone organized,” says Car- melina Chocooj, the Oxfam America program officer in Alta Verapaz.40 “In general terms, the program is really important to poor women and the communities. This is the only way of keeping the women organized. In Guatemala, there hasn’t been a project that can keep the women together like the savings program.” Carmelina shared how in her experience, savings groups can become platforms for members to advocate on one another’s behalf. “Now the women show solidarity to other women who are victims of domestic abuse, they bring them to court or have conflict resolution and accountability processes in their community.”
Angelica Mazariegos, a supervisor with ASECSA in Baja Verapaz, explained how training volunteers is an opportunity to strengthen women’s leadership in each community. “I see the volunteers as engines in the community, collectively teaching the methodology, and that’s why we’ve focused on increasing the capacity that they have, because we know that [the volunteer] is going to stay in the community and keep the groups alive.”41
Participation in Saving for Change has given members the ability to assert their human rights. Before Saving for
Change, said Elena Garzon,42 a volunteer from Baja Verapaz, “women were discriminated against. We were overlooked. They told us, ‘You can’t participate because you’re a woman.’” She emphasized the importance of the savings group as a safe space. “Now we have that liberty to participate, to express ourselves, to value ourselves as women and somewhere to seek shelter when we have been physically or mentally mistreated.... The people say: ‘It is true that we have rights, but since we do not know [what they are] we let ourselves be hurt and taken advantage of.’ But now if a husband hits his wife, he goes to prison.”43