Introduction

Despite many indicators that suggest women in New Zealand society enjoy a level of equality that surpasses many of our neighbours and trading partners, there is still evidence that points to continuing disparity between men and women at an economic level. This is a situation of great concern, given New Zealand's commitment to the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). A particular area of concern relates to the access of women to finance, with feedback from those consulted on a report on the implementation of CEDAW in New Zealand noting that women are financially disadvantaged, particularly in relation to their ability to borrow money. A number of suggestions as to how this situation could be addressed were made within this process, and these suggestions point at specific concerns over women being able to access small sums of money and/or obtaining credit at low levels.

Discussion on the topic of women and micro-finance and/or micro-credit has also been occurring within the context of APEC. At the 1st APEC Ministerial Meeting on Women (in Manila in 1998), general concerns about women's access to finance and economic literacy were raised. The meeting recommended that APEC leaders and ministers address the barriers to women's access to finance, including micro-finance. Member countries reported on these issues at the 2nd Ministerial Meeting in September 2002, at which the theme was 'Advancing Women's Economic Interests and Opportunities in the New Economy' and where one of the sub-themes was micro-enterprises. Acknowledgment was made at the meeting of the role of micro-finance organisations in enabling women who don't have access to traditional financial services. Recommendations that were made included encouraging the development of commercially based micro-finance institutions, and facilitating the dissemination of information on best practice in terms of micro-enterprise development and financial services for those businesses.

These discussions provided the context for this review, which was commissioned by the Ministry of Women's Affairs in order to better understand the situation for New Zealand women with regard to their access to micro-finance.

The objective of the review was to provide the Ministry with a “high-level literature review to thoroughly research and document the situation for New Zealand women with regard to their access to micro-finance. The researchers were asked to provide a clear picture of what research has been undertaken to date, to identify the gaps in the 'body of knowledge' (particularly in the context of developed countries), and to provide some recommendations on the shape of the project that will follow the review.

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The Research Method

This report summarises information that was collected from a variety of sources during the course of the review. These sources included printed material (research reports, academic articles and newspaper and magazine articles) as well as opinions provided by individuals involved at a policy or practitioner level with the provision of services related to women and/or micro-finance. The use of these different sources reflects the information gathering strategy that was undertaken by the researchers, which involved searching the literature (both through traditional library databases and via the Internet), and speaking to individuals who are known to have an interest in women and micro-finance in New Zealand.

This dual focus was chosen in order to capture both 'what is being done' in the field as well as 'what is known' on the basis of formal research and evaluation exercises, given that much of what has been written about women and micro-finance is informal, anecdotal, and impressionistic. An additional problem is that much of what 'is known' has not been written down – its chief means of dissemination is by word of mouth within a group of practitioners. These issues meant that some of the material that was uncovered could be characterised as atypical in terms of a traditional 'literature review'. In an area where a reasonable amount of work has been undertaken, there is usually a base of 'research' literature (i.e. empirically based evidence) to ground the review. In order to supplement (or build) on this base, information is collected from the practitioner or popular literature. To complete the picture information is also recorded that is largely anecdotal or impressionist in nature. However, in the context of women and micro-finance (especially within the context of New Zealand) the proportions in terms of the literature were reversed (as is depicted in Figure 1). Here there is very little research literature, and therefore the anecdotal material was relatively more important in the context of building up a picture of women and micro-finance in New Zealand.

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Searching the literature

Searches were made of electronic databases of academic journals and of New Zealand newspapers and magazines (a list of those accessed and the 'key words' used to search are presented in Appendix C). Other literature was sourced through the Ministry of Women's Affairs Library, the Massey University Library, and some material was sourced from other libraries via Interloan. Research associates of the New Zealand Centre for Small and Medium Enterprise Research and other academics at Massey University were consulted to ascertain whether they knew of or were working on any research in the area.

Figure 1: The literature base

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 Searching the World Wide Web

A general search of the World Wide Web using the Internet was also made, using similar key words to those described above. A number of websites known to the researchers were also searched for literature and/or initiatives being undertaken. A list of some examples of the type of websites accessed is provided in Appendix C.

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Interviewing key informants

After consulting with the client and after searches of websites and other relevant literature, a number of potential 'key informants' were identified. Some of these were already known to have some interest in women and micro-finance, whilst others were suggested by those the researchers consulted initially. The researchers interviewed most of these individuals by telephone. A full list of these informants is presented in Appendix B and a summary of the information they provided has been integrated into the section of the report Access to Micro-finance in New Zealand. Whilst primarily acting as a data collection tool the telephone calls also served a confirmatory purpose. Often the contact confirmed theories being raised in the literature and/or provided names that were being mentioned as 'key' by other sources.

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Structure of the Report

The report presents the material from the research-based literature in the following section: Micro-finance & women in the literature. Material gathered from the popular press and the various practitioner literatures, as well as from the key informants is presented in the section: Access to Micro-finance in New Zealand. The final section comprises conclusions and a set of recommendations as to the way forward for the project.

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