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THEME: Promotion of women’s income generating activities requires careful attention to markets and profit margins.
IFAD has promoted both on-farm and off-farm income-generating
activities for rural women in Syria. The Fund’s own evaluation showed
that the most profitable activities were those involving livestock
or poultry. Dairying and calf-fattening appeared particularly profitable,
with sheep and goat-raising showing marginal profitability. In 1999, incomes
from cow-raising were as high as SYP 7 420 per month, and for poultry,
sometimes reaching SYP 4 500 a month. But these were the exceptions.
Where women had taken a loan to buy a cow, most were earning around SYP
1 500 a month.
Only rarely was women’s income from sewing or knitting or other types of handicrafts comparable to that from livestock. A few women were found to earn SYP 2 000 a month from knitting, but this was rare. Most women earned far less or nothing at all. Marketing was a major constraint on income from all handicraft activities. Some of the handicrafts had, at best, a small, and often shrinking, local market. Where a number of women in the same village started the same business, matters were worse. As a result, some women who had taken out loans to buy expensive sewing machines found it hard to repay the loans.
Only a small proportion of the women who received training were interested in taking out, and able to qualify for, a loan. On the other hand, some who received both technical training and loans were less interested in income than in having a hobby. These women always undertook ‘clean’ off-farm activities, such as courses in plastic flower arranging, ceramics, sewing, knitting, weaving and other handicrafts. They were usually the younger and better-off women who felt that a nice hobby would enhance their marriage chances and help produce gifts for friends and family. Finally, there were women who received both training and loans, and who needed the income, but who simply did not have the entrepreneurial drive or business skills to make a success of their small businesses.
This experience has provided a number of important lessons:
- A lesson on participation. In theory, it is a good idea for women to choose the skill they want to learn or the business they want to undertake. However, IFAD found that women tended to base their choices on what they knew and liked, rather than on an understanding of markets and profitability. Since many women knew very little about non-traditional business opportunities, their choices of skills and businesses limited them to their traditional roles. Often too, women tended to choose what their friends had chosen, a tendency that can result in a surplus of plastic flower arrangements on the local market, and no income.
Participation in decisions is most meaningful and beneficial when it is based on adequate information about options, including the pros and cons of each.
- A lesson on coordinating training and credit. Many more women underwent training than had access to set up capital or than were able to obtain loans – perhaps five times as many. This means frustration, particularly if women have sacrificed to attend the training sessions, as poorer women usually must do. The problem, in this case, was not credit availability per se, but the fact that lending conditions and loan products tended to exclude the poorer women.
Loan conditions and loan products need to be appropriate to poorer women.
- A lesson on profitability. If loans are to be given to graduates of skills training programmes, the training programmes have to focus on teaching skills that will have markets. Women’s limited role in marketing also needs to be considered, which would argue for developing or strengthening women’s marketing know-how and access to nearby marketing channels. Credit programmes also need to make sure they assess the profitability of the proposed loan activity.
Markets and profitability needs to be considered both in skills training and in credit programmes.
- A lesson on information. Many women who chose to take the training and the loans apparently had expected the project to provide them with a production and marketing framework. Programmes need to clearly state what they will provide and what people have to do for themselves.
Programmes need to clearly state what they will provide and what people will have to do for themselves.
Overall, promotion of income-generating activities for women requires a much more practical approach than often is adopted by development programmes. The bottom line is profitability. Poor women cannot afford either to undergo training or to take loans unless a reasonable profit margin is possible.
Adapted from:
IFAD - Office of Evaluation and Studies. 1999. Syrian Arab Republic – Southern Agricultural Development Project (Phase II), Mid-Term Evaluation, Vols. I & II. Rome. May.
IFAD - Office of Evaluation and Studies. 1999. Thematic Study on Rainfed Agriculture, Main Report, Appendixes and Annex. Rome. October.
