Women's Role and Social Capital

With all our focus on participation and member ownership, we wanted to know how much power Saving for Change members really had over their groups’ decisions and resources, as well as their decisions over the loans and savings they brought home.

Since the earliest days of Saving for Change in Mali, participants, staff, and several studies have understood that Saving for Change can influence a deeply transformative change in members’ lives. The most inconclusive results from the IPA/BARA study were the findings on decision-making power, social networks, and gender relations.

Findings from BARA’s ethnographic analysis support the hypothesis that social capital increases as a result of partic­ipation in Saving for Change. Specifically, they highlighted increases in village-level solidarity and contact with other women and strengthened preexisting social ties. These find­ings are also consistent with prior research on Saving for Change and formal and informal interviews with countless group members that highlight how Saving for Change helps women build solidarity and confidence. However, results from the RCT do not demonstrate impacts related to social capital. The women did not expand their social networks and were no more likely to take actions, such as speaking to the chief or a government official, than they were before. While the RCT found no increase in the number of the women’s contacts, the BARA anthropologists found that the depth of these relationships had increased.