Women Voting Rights in Small Family Enterprise - Iran

Microfinancing small family business

HISTORY:
Towns in Iran have been administrative, commercial, and manufacturing centers. The traditional political elite consisted of families whose wealth was derived from land and/or trade and from which were recruited the official representatives of the central government. The middle stratum included merchants and owners of artisan workshops. The lowest class of urban society included the artisans, laborers, and providers of personal services, such as barbers, bath attendants, shoemakers, tailors, and servants. Most of these, especially the artisans, who were organized
into trade associations or guilds, worked in the covered bazaars of the towns. The establishment of modern factories displaced the numerous artisan workshops. Parts of old bazaars were destroyed to create wide streets. Merchants were encouraged to
locate retail shops along these new streets rather than in the bazaars. Many of the stores that opened to meet the increased demand for commerce and services from the rapidly expanding urban population were in the new streets. The working class was divided into various groups of workers: those in the oil industry, manufacturing, construction, and transportation; and mechanics and artisans in bazaar workshops.

RELIGIOUS LAW supports the sanctity of the family in diverse ways, defining the conditions for marriage, divorce, inheritance, and guardianship. The head of the household--the father and the husband--expects obedience and respect from others in the family. In return, he is obligated to support them and to satisfy their spiritual, social, and material needs. Marriage arrangements in villages and among the lower and traditional middle classes of urban areas tend to follow traditional patterns. There must be an agreement on the amount of the bride-price (shirbaha) that will be given to the bride's family at the time of marriage. The exact sum varies according to the wealth, social position, and degree of kinship of the two families. The dowery (mahriyeh) usually is not paid at the time of the marriage. The contract notes that it is to be paid, however, in the event of divorce or, in case of the husband's death, to be deducted from his estate before the inheritance is divided according to religious law. If the mahriyeh is waived, as sometimes happens in urban areas, this too must be stipulated in the marriage contract.

Social organization in villages are less stratified than in urban areas, but a hierarchy of political and social relationships and patterns of interaction could be identified. At the top of the village social structure was the largest landowner or owners. In the middle stratum were peasants owning medium to small farms. In the larger villages the middle stratum also included local merchants and
artisans. The lowest level, which predominated in most villages, consisted of landless villagers. Agricultural workers were recruited from among the landless villagers and were given either a share of the crop or a cash wage. The landless villagers were composed of three distinct social groups: village merchants, village artisans and service workers, and agricultural laborers. Village artisans included
blacksmiths, carpenters, cobblers, and coppersmiths. After land reform, the office of kadkhuda became, at least in theory, elective. However, since the kadkhuda was the primary channel through which the government transacted its affairs with the villages, this meant that kadkhudas were actually selected by government officials.

Historically and culturally deep rooted examples of collective decision making planning action and management of resources can be traced in agriculture,livestock, fisheries, natural resources, nomadic migration, communal projects and infrastructure, social events, and crises. A common but diminshing characteristic of rural communities is the autonomy and endogenous manner in which local people address
common needs and reciprocal relationships.


ECONOMIC ANALYSIS:
The future prospects of Iranian society is becoming considerably modern; both consumerism and media exposure are rising. According to the 2000 DHS, 77 percent of rural households and 94 percent of urban households had televisions, which had helped promote the idea of a small family norm. Improvements in female education have also contributed to increased use of contraceptives. The percentage of rural women who were literate increased from 17 percent to 62 percent between 1976 and 1996; more than 75 percent of Iranian women are literate. The rate of secondary school enrollment has more than doubled for girls, from 36 percent in the mid-1980s to 72 percent in the mid-1990s, while boys' enrollments have increased from 73 percent to 81 percent over the same time span. In 2000, more women than men entered universities. The longer women stay in school, the higher the standard of living they want for themselves and their families. The quality of children's lives
also becomes more important. Any assessment of the developmental situation in Iran is constrained by limited coverage and delayed publication of official data. Little data has been collected or published on subjects such as the economy, mortality and morbidity, nutrition and the environment. Although population growth has been eased by recent advances in reproductive health and family planning there are still regional disparities in the availability of quality services.In addition, nearly 2.5 million refugees of Afghan, Pakistani, and Iraqi origin in Iran has placed special demands on social and economic planning.The educational and health needs of the
refugees are different from those of the rest of the population and maintaining a balance between full integration and preparation for repatriation requires flexible planning. Recent growth has been insufficient either to create employment on the scale needed or toprovide the tax base to finance necessary state efforts in health, education, welfare, infrastructure and environmental protection. For a high growth rate to be achieved, it would be necessary to raise the proportion of the national product invested annually in productive activity and environmental protection.
In Iran, as elsewhere, widespread joblessness as a straight road to poverty has been a destabilizing social force. According to the latest claim by a high welfare organization official, some 12% of Iran’s total population, or about 9mn, live below the poverty line, and as many as another 17%, or 11mn are considered “needy.” Private estimates show as high as 40% of the population under absolute or relative poverty lines – with unemployment often cited as a major contributing factor. Jobless-related poverty, in turn, has been frequently found to be as the main cause of countless “social ills” including suicides, dysfunctional families, high divorce rates, drug addiction, illegal underground activities, violent crimes, prostitution, graft and corruption. Some 60% of nationwide suicides in Iran are directly traced to the absence of paying jobs.


FAMILY STRUCTURE:
In the traditional view, an ideal society was one in which women were confined to the home, where they performed the various domestic tasks associated with managing a household and rearing children. Men worked in the public sphere, that is, in the fields, factories, bazaars, and offices. Traditional middle-class women worked outside the home only from dire necessity. Rapid industrial growth created a modern, urban working class that nonetheless coexisted with people who had more traditional occupations, values, and ways of life. Iran's financial system began adhering to Islamic principles after the Revolution, a process that accelerated in the 1980s.

Labor regulations and family laws in Iran reinforce the traditional family model, making women financially, legally and socially dependent on men. The responsibility of male figure of the household as the sole bread winner is clearly marked in the
Constitution. Having become an outward symbol of Islamic identity and cultural purity, Iranian Muslim women get caught in a web of conflicting forces as their looks, activities, and behaviour become closely monitored as the first manifestations of cultural penetration and invasion. Similar to other countries in the world, the space opened for women can only become secure with the enhanced grassroots organisational capacity. This is particularly the case in the light of the
restructuring policy that the Islamic state has embarked upon. As is quite well-known, such an economic restructuring imposes heavy economic burdens on lower-income families pressuring middle- income families forcing women to participate in the household economic activity, and opens up further avenues for income and wealth generation as well as conspicuous consumption for upper-income families. Middle-income professional and salaried women become increasingly stressed out in terms of their inability to negotiate family and work obligations with little voting rights
and share in the family's earning. Lower-income women are faced with serious social injustice unless proper employment and social support policies are instituted.

The laws of inheritance and the policies on micro credits have limited the access of women to financial resources as banks do not promote lending without collateral. Women’s lack and poorly enforceable rights over property in the labor market and in the home means that they are more vulnerable to poverty than men. The contingent nature of women’s rights over resources and property, often secured through family or marriage ties, means that even women in wealthy households are vulnerable to poverty, especially in the event of separation, divorce, widowhood or other household breakdown.

The state, as the regulator for storing social justice and diminishes women's exploitation has to act among various interests, understandably responding to the most powerful. As such, women's organisational capacity will not only impact the quality of life for women per se but also the quality of life of lower-
and middle-income families in general. A report commissioned by the Management and Plan Organization and released in early September 2004 puts the total national unemployment rate at 13.2%, and predicts that if this level holds up, then the jobless rate among the 15-29 age group will reach 52% within two years.

IMPEDIMENTS OF LABOR LAW: The strongest deterrent to high employment has been labor-market rigidities caused in part by the country's anti-business labor code. The law, which is now fiercely defended by workers and their friends in high places, imposes onerous burdens on small and mid-size firms that serve as the largest job providers. The code requires employers to pay no less than a minimum wage; observe limited number of hours of work; provide compensation for over-time; give regular annual bonuses regardless of their financial position; pay two-thirds of the 30% workers' social security, health and unemployment insurance costs; and provide free training, housing and transportation expenses for their employees. Workers are also entitled to annual holidays and sick leaves with pay, and receive a hefty severance pay if fired, even for cause, thus reducing annual employee turnovers to a minimum. By one private estimate, non-wage expenses often amount to 1.5-2 times the wage bill for an
average employer. For these reasons, in the last few years, entrepreneurs have remained reluctant to hire full-time workers on a permanent basis, and chosen to fill their vacancies with fixed- term contract employees, in order to escape most of those obligations. Finally, responsible for inadequate job creation have been such other structural market deficiencies as insufficient wage flexibility, absence
of independent labor unions, low labor mobility, lack of collective bargaining, and imperfect information needed to match labor supply and demand.

FUTURE STRUGGLES: In 1993, the legislature passed a family planning bill that removed most of the economic incentives for large families. For example, some allowances to large families were cancelled, and some social benefits for children were provided for only a couple's first three children. The law also gave
special attention to such goals as reducing infant mortality, promoting women's education and employment, and extending social security and retirement benefits
to all parents so that they would not be motivated to have many children as a source of old age security and support. As a result, annual population growth has fallen from 3.9% in the l980s to an estimated 1.4% now. Improvements in female education have also contributed to increased use of contraceptives. The percentage of rural women who were literate increased from 17 percent to 62 percent between 1976 and 1996; more than 75 percent of Iranian women are literate. The rate of secondary school enrollment has more than doubled for girls, from 36 percent in the mid-1980s to 72 percent in the mid-1990s, while boys' enrollments have increased from 73 percent to 81 percent over the same time span. In 2000, more women than men entered
universities. The longer women stay in school, the higher the standard of living they want for themselves and their families. The quality of children's lives
also becomes more important. Under these circumstances, the baby-boomers' pressure
on the job supply is expected to end by the end of this decade, and the natural rate of employment restored. This will result in greater productivity savings and investments with significant prospects for development which will turn this young generation into a 'population bonus',the term used by demographers to describe a country where fertility rates are low and the largest proportion of the population is aged between 25- 40 years. With a smaller number of dependents to support, such a country generates surplus wealth, allowing for greater savings which could translate into investments which boost the economy. The countries known as the Asian Tigers -
Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia - are prime examples of this model. In fact, if economic growth during 2010-20 should match the pre-revolution peaks, Iran might again become a labor importer, as was the case in the 1970s. The critical period is thus here and now. Generating nearly 800.000 jobs a year until 2010, which requires people's effort to take measures ranging from some short-term emergency micro financing to the long-term restructuring of the economy. The critical issue for Iran is to address the needs of unemployed women and youngsters comprising two third of the country's total population. Their needs for jobs, housing, reproductive health care and other social services will shape the human development outlook of Iran. World Bank analysis reveals that in Middle Eastern countries if the female labor force participation rate increased in accordance with education levels and age structure, household earnings could rise by as much as
twenty-five percent. For many families in Iran, this is the only way to step out of poverty vicious circle, which demonstrates the instrumental role that women
play in lifting their families out of poverty and influencing the larger socio-economic climate.

Yet, the thinking to turn Iran into another Japan through the adoption of a Chinese-style social compact needs attention to prerequisites for creating such a concoction. Japanese economic success is rooted in its well educated, frugal, highly motivated, hard working and disciplined workers; centuries of experience with an industrial culture; an innate talent for using borrowed technology in innovative and creative ways; fairly tranquil management-labor relations; and a workable democratic political system. Indeed, Iran lacks all of this.

In sum, without effective remedies needed to create jobs for some 800,000 new entrants in the job market every year, or to bring down rising living costs, the country will now have to face a radicalized and angry populace that can neither be satisfied nor cajoled. For another, unmet job demands by unemployed college graduates, estimated to run as high as 40%, combined with economic hardships suffered by fixed income groups, and rising house and health care costs for the newly urbanized population are bound to intensify street demonstrations, worker strikes, teachers' protests, and civil disobedience and if politically harassed in intolerable ways, they may go underground with an ominous new threat to the majority. Thus, a combination of economic hardships, social restrictions, and political repression — without the Chinese-style safety valves – may ultimately drive the country to an unpredictable dead end.

MICROFINANCING FAMILY PROJECTS:
Basic factors in development, particularly rural development is now widely recognized as the empowerment of women, their capacity building within the household and the community. Investing and analysing in Microfinance proposes provides a different view of poverty and of the role the private sector in development projects. Micro finance projects involves partnership with the poor to think together and innovate sustainable income generating activities, facilitating the poor to engage in the projects of finding solutions to alleviate poverty. Financing pro poor micro projects also represents a market opportunity with immense growth opportunities for financial institutions. Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) have found a way to serve impoverished markets by providing small loans and other financial services, such as savings and insurance, to very low-income individuals and families in great number. Women often lack the necessary conditions for obtaining loans from formal financial institutes, and consequently approach
individuals who demand high rates of interest.

Currently there is a significant gap left by conventional financial institutions with regards to financial services supply to impoverished populations. Microfinance not only fills a gap in the family budgets, it also contributes to the reduction of poverty and decreases vulnerability of communities by allowing for the local development of small enterprises who have identified local opportunities in small scale. MFIs provides participatory engagement of poor to realize their schemes out of poverty. Studies show the MFIs operating with low payment default rates have been successful to maintain repayments. According to the MBB92, in a research study involving 124 institutions from Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, numbers show that 53% (66 institutions) of the surveyed MFIs have achieved financial self-sufficiency (FSS), which is defined by the capacity to cover all costs of operations, inflation and standardized loan loss provisioning. According to MBB9, those FSS institutions presented an average return on assets of 5.7% and a 14.6% return on equity. Although microfinance institutions offer an approach to combine investment and poverty alleviation, there are many features that are different from traditional investment opportunities.

1. Strengthen the institutional, organizational, and technical capacity of participating local organizations to provide microfinance services to the economically active poor.
2. Increase the financial capacity of participating organizations to provide microfinance services to the economically active poor.
3. Contribute to the development of knowledge, expertise, and information concerning microfinance, at the level of the participating organizations.
4. Enhance the capacity of the Social Fund to manage its existing microcredit projects and to propose new ones based on best practice principles.
5. Enhance the capacity of the Social Fund to provide technical assistance and training to Sponsoring Agencies (SAs) and necessary follow on SA funded projects, as part of its responsibilities as an apex institution.
6. Contribute to the development of reporting standards within the Social Fund for the microcredit operations under the Community Development Program (CDP) and link with relevant MIS development objectives.
7. Ensure the continuity of the initiatives taken in the pilot program.

However, the focus should not be so much on the policy changes required to create an enabling environment, but on looking at the actual assets, which households have, and what is needed to mobilize these and use them to generate income. This links
up to the barriers facing the establishment of small businesses in the formal sector. The assets should be examined in detail, which households have in the country: the amount, composition and the extent to which they are currently used as start-up capital for small businesses or self-employment. The main aim is to identify existing barriers to mobilizing household assets as starting capital for small businesses. Proposals on how to remove these barriers, and suggestions on new forms of organizing business which would allow households to undertake business activities initially on the basis of their own assets/property, while reducing the risks involved.

Experience has shown that people, and not the resources they manage, must be placed at the centre of development if poverty is to be reduced and eliminated. Where businesses cannot develop, countries cannot flourish. The International Year of Microcredit is to put millions of families on the path to prosperity, given that the bulk of services under microfinance involves giving loans to underserved individuals
who otherwise would not have a chance to say, start or expand a business. Proponents of microfinance believe that well-managed microfinance programs can be instrumental to ending poverty—and achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Giving the poor access to much-needed financial services, particularly microcredit, empowers them to
gain more control over their lives and earning capacities.

With the right circumstances, businesses such as goat-herding, basket-weaving and food-processing can ignite a network of industries that support each other in a mutually dependent cycle. In a developing country even small amount micro financed potential benefits can be quite high, particularly for individuals who engage
in trade, or buy and sell goods and services.


URBAN WOMEN ACCESS TO CREDIT: Women entrepreneurs who initiate small businesses in developing countries face an array of barriers like lack of knowledge, burden of higher costs of services, heavy bureaucracy, lack of start up capital and difficulty accessing loans. Attempts to support businesses to attract domestic investors, for example by organising investors’ fairs and other similar group activities to widen the network of financial provision for small projects yields favorable results.

The Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995, recognized that women's literacy is key to empowering women's participation in decisionmaking in society and to improving families' well-being. In addition, the United Nations has articulated the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which include goals for improved education, gender equality, and women's empowerment. The MDGs emphasize education's essential role in building democratic societies and creating a foundation for sustained economic growth. Economies' export orientation and the growing importance of small and medium-sized enterprises create opportunities for women, but women need the appropriate education and training to take full advantage of these opportunities. Educated women are more politically active and better informed about their legal rights and how to exercise them.

The government of Iran has developed a women’s volunteer program to encourage low-income residents of cities to be informed and educated to use health facilities. The volunteers serve as intermediaries between families and government-sponsored health clinics. Volunteers can also choose to participate in other areas of community life, such as cleaning up the streets or holding classes on special health topics. The women’s volunteer program began in 1993 with 200 volunteers in Shahre-Rey, a low-income suburb south of Tehran. Now there are more than 43,000 such volunteers throughout the country, working closely with their neighborhood clinics. Volunteers maintain files of demographic and health information on each household in their area. The files are kept at the clinic and can be used by health staff, and volunteers use the information to help families make appointments to address health care needs. Urban health centers use volunteers, who are chosen in part based on their reputation within the neighborhood, to ensure that even low-income families receive basic health services.

As the region's cost of living rises rapidly, families are increasingly forced to depend on the additional income that female family members can provide. The already existing and established networks of women volunteers could be activated, trained and expanded for the proper implementation of family microfinance funds for establishing training, awareness raising and reaching out to marginalized women in urban areas and furtherance of women led small business schemes for poor families.

National and international organisation such as Oxfam could be engaged and facilitate as they have programs to support small business owners to form associations and provide training in lobbying techniques. This will help women led enterprises to represent their interests and lobby municipal authorities, in the face of government support, inspections and other administrative barriers. The municipal governments officials should be trained and informed to prioritise small business development. Holding regular open meetings with entrepreneurs to discuss issues of concern in addition to training, consultancy, coaching, and exchange visits should be integrated in the agenda of municipal authorities.


WOMEN LED FAMILY MICROFINANCE PROJECT:
Of significant importance is local partnerships; particularly family involvement are mandatory to avoid major errors in microfinance projects, but as capital can dictate fashion, it’s important that investors understand the regional savoir-faire and respect the nuances of doing business in a manner that reflects local communities and their customs. This is the point where community and family engagement is more than necessary - it is vital. One example of such a nuance is the issue of the loan suitability assessment process. Products and processes cannot be simply
copied from conventional financial systems, but have to be composed and adapted to the local conditions. MFIs have succeeded in customizing the solutions to its borrowers. This means that the loan packages are not designed to reach the MFI’s revenue target, but are designed to be suitable to the borrowers’ repayment capability. Furthermore, the loans are oriented towards fitness of purpose, ensuring that the terms are appropriate for the way in which the funds are utilized. The customization of conditions translates into a low default rate and investment
instruments can be diversified. Nonetheless, there is space for development and improvement as the new member of the families step in and bring along new
ideas and new market opportunities. Today microfinance reaches 66.75 million clients - there is still a long way to go.

By offering a secure business location with a modern power supply, by offering training, mentoring and business development services and by applying the market development approach to ensure businesses reflect market opportunities,
sustainable and profitable small and micro-enterprises can be established. MFIs have produced information for performance monitoring of their activities in terms of
profitability, efficiency, asset quality, etc. On the other side investors have acknowledged that the MFIs methodology of lending is key for the success of
providing business opportunities for marginalized and poor families. The division of roles and responsibility between famale and male are an issue in traditional families. although women exert a strong informal presence in the family business, their formal share of income must be addressed and legalized. Earlier involvement and socialization of young family members into involvement with the business is also an issue. Children are frequently schooled from a young age with the expectation that they will enter the family business early on in their career. judicious use of advisors will ensure the success. governance structures which help the family to find consensus and unified in setting the firm's mission.

Most micro-enterprise programmes look for investments that will save time and make labour efficient. For example, agricultural projects may need irrigation systems, a good road or improved machines. Women's greatest needs for saving time are usually in the home. They need easier access to water, equipment for washing and cooking.

MICROFINANCE INSTITUTIONS too often overlook secure, voluntary savings and innovative types of insurance, focusing only on credit for enterprises. Saving is sometimes a more flexible mechanism than credit to enable poor women to cope with births, illness or housing needs, as well as invest in enterprises. Since only some women take the enterprise path to credit, savings and insurance as well as reducing the risks involved will help smooth income for a greater number of poor women and workers.Women for start up ideas to launch the family small businesses could consult with the husband or other family members who are familiar with market opportunities and lacking time to undertake the initiative or are already employed. However, case studies prove the members of the family should depend on sources outside their close circle for acquiring know-how and skills for the new Income Generation Activities. It is advisable that members to be trained on basic IGA management skills such as calculating profit and loss, ways of maximising profit, establishing forward and backward linkages etcetera. The internal functioning within the enterprise should be democratic, and decisions regarding savings and credit activities should be arrived at collectively, and without undue external influence.

Research in Africa confirmed that savings contribute to women's empowerment. The solidarity of a women's group based on savings may be stronger than one linked together by debt. Women of a bakery collective in Mexico save and also allow for maternity leave without penalty. A women's group in San Salvador has developed innovative mechanisms to cover loan payments if a woman falls ill; both are types of health insurance. The Saving and Loans Associations in India had followed the practice of demand driven and need based credit. The credit offered to an individual member was not linked to her savings with the group, but was based on her credit needs. The rationale for this approach was that savings linked credit prevents the poorest from gaining access to credit. In addition it affects the required credit size adversely and prompts the members to borrow from external credit sources, even on disadvantageous terms, till they have stipulated savings with the group.
Consumption loans are also secured to pay back old loans taken from moneylenders for which large amounts of interest had been accumulating, eating into the family income. Consumption loans acts as an insurance mechanism since they provide basic economic and social security and help the poor to avoid liquidation of essential family assets and wastage of individual workdays.


CONCLUSION:
Micro credit can be a start to entrepreneurship within the existing market regulations, which can have a significant impact on the socio economic conditions of the rural and urban communities, and can lead to increasing capital, bigger loans and more effective livelihood endeavours. The challenge could be how to negotiate the required time, finance and most importantly hunan resources to realize the potential benefits of micro credit funds to expand family small businesses. Member of the family are encouraged to deposit their dormant non productive savings into the fund, so as to build up capital for starting economic activities. Group of women representing their family members could come together in order to be able to obtain loans for economic innovations. Keeping records on savings and loans and monitor the members entrepreneurial activities would enhance capacity for cllective action. The loan and savings regulations would sometimes be revised in order to better suit the conditions of the members households nd the community.

Formation of Women-led Small Business Associations help women establish an individual identity outside their kinship ties and facilitate their identification with an extra-familial group. Building networks and associating with other members of micro-finance projects further encourage new and strengthened networks among women who would not otherwise interact. Formation of women led small enterprises which requires families to associate and contribute in a collective saving initiative facilitate social capital formation among women who, prior to membership, rarely associated with individuals outside their close circle kinship groups. The center meetings enable members to build social capital in the forms of individual and group identity and new and strengthened networks. The social benefits of family economic activities and schduled meetings at the center sustain women in ways financial capital alone cannot.

According to Oxfam, in Central America, researchers find that women's enterprises are usually labour-intensive activities making low profits, while men's enterprises are more likely to grow and re-invest the profits. Subsistence enterprises improve food security less than dynamic ones, since they have little cushion - cash flow or product diversity - to survive changes in the market. To build a dynamic economic project takes many different skills, and always lots of time. Time is often the problem for women entrepreneurs. Women have too much domestic work, and that work takes too much time. However, their own attitude of redoing and obsession with details in homework is also hampering advancement of their way of thinking. Life skills training projects should be focused on home management schemes and come
out of domesticity for more serious social/economic engagement for women. Trainings should revolve around scheduling time and increase organisational skills on using time in more effective ways.

A PILOT PROJECT: A female villager Like many others, had lost her young husband to drug addiction, returned from the local Friday bazaar with a smile, having sold all the traditional dresses she had made at home. With the money she earned, she could buy the school notebooks she had promised to her eight-year old child. her life is changing, however, and she can now provide for her family of nine, thanks to a small loan obtained through a pilot poverty alleviation project UNDP started in cooperation with the Government's Management and Planning Organization. The Family and Sustainable Development Fund, an Iranian civil society organization, is carrying out the project. With a US$90 loan, she bought a sewing machine, and she is earning more than her brother, the family's only other breadwinner.

MUNA'S SUCCESS RECIPE (Entrepreneur of the Year):
Thirteen years ago Muna Hamdan’s family was barely supported by her husband's modest produce business. Muna was determined to try to change in their living conditions. With the support of her husband, Muna started to market her homemade pickles and jams at the main vegetable market in Sahab, and in supermarkets and restaurants in Marka. Looking to expand her business in 1999, Muna approached the Jordan Micro Credit Company. The six loans she took from JMCC over the next two years boosted her business. Today Muna - now a mother of eight - has managed to buy her own house in Marka,the result of 13 years of hard work and determination. And her entrepreneurial spirit continues. She is planning to take anther loan to open her own store to sell pickles and frozen vegetables.



IDENTIFIED CHALLENGES:
Socio-cultural challenges
Legal barriers
Cultural and traditional barriers

PERSONAL CHALLENGES:
Poor technical awareness
Lack of self confidence
Poor cooperation of husband and family members
Home engagement and duties

EXTERNAL CHALLENGES:
Poor human resources
Difficulty in raw material provision
Poor marketing channels

REMEDIES TO ERADICATE CHALLENGES:
Eradication of traditional challenges through discussing and offering reformative opinions and membership in local assemblies and councils must go on continuously.
Researchers find that a significant element in household bargaining is whether women see their disadvantage in the division of domestic work and income, and whether they consciously negotiate to improve their situation.If funding institutions do address the constraints on women's time, enhance self esteem and capabilities, encourage risk taking initiative, develop innovative credit, savings and insurance, and promote recognition of women's economic contributions, then women's bargaining power in the home may improve, and they can help to develop dynamic economic projects which contribute to family's income. Otherwise, the women's enterprises that obtain finance from micro-finance institutions may continue to be survival-level activities, and allows men to turn to opportunitic attitude toward exploiting them - collecting their income with no bargaining advantages and avoiding any changes in family power relationships.



REFERENCES:
1. Prahalad C.K., The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramd: Eradicating Poverty through Profits, Wharton School Publishing
2. MBB9 - Microbanking, Bulletin number 9 - www.mixmbb.org
3. www.cgap.org about microfinance
4. Microfinance’s Double Bottom Line, Measuring Social Return for the Microfinance
Industry By Drew Tulchin, Social Enterprise Associates, 2003 (www.socialenterprise.NET)
5. Daley-Harris, S. et al, State of the Microcredit Summit Campaign Report 2003 6. Renata Peregrino de Brito, Brooklyn Bridge/TBLI Group 7. C.K. Prahalad, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid Historically
6. OXFAM GB, Gender, Development, and Trade, Author:Caroline Sweetman, PUBLISHED: 24 May 2001
7. Oxfam in Russia, The Urban Livelihoods Programme
8. Oxfam publication, Women, empoyment and exclusion, Author: Caroline Sweetman, PUBLISHED: 01 Dec 1996
9. Iran’s Prospects Under the 7th Majlis By Jahangir Amouzegar, Distinguished Economist, 2004
10. The Political Economy of Economic Reform in the Middle East: The Challenge to Governance, Alan Richards Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies
University of California, Santa Cruz, 2001
11. Beyond Micro-credit: Putting Development Back into Micro-finance, Published by Oxfam, Thomas Fisher and M S Sriram, 2002
12. Oxfam Report, Micro-finance and women: how to improve food security? Nov 1997
13. POPULATION REFERENCE BUREAU, IRAN’S FAMILY PLANNING PROGRAM, by Farzaneh Roudi-Fahimi, http://www.prb.org/pdf/IransFamPlanProg_Eng.pdf, 2003
14. UNDP, United Nations Common Country Assessment of Iran's development, 2003
15. UN, "Millennium Development Goals: About the Goals," accessed online at www.developmentgoals.org/About_the_goals.htm, on May 15, 2003.
16. POPULATION REFERENCE BUREAU, Empowering Women, Developing Society: Female Education in the Middle East and North Africa, by Farzaneh Roudi-Fahimi and Valentine M. Moghadam, November 2003
17. Oxfam, Gender and Development (Hunt and Kasynathan, p42) & (Endeley, p34) (Van Staveren, p13)
18. Iran’s Unemployment Crisis, By Jahangir Amuzegar, October 11, 2004
19. CWL CENTER for WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP,GENDER DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE, WOMAN-LED FAMILY BUSINESSES EXPERIENCE GREATER SUCCESS THAN THOSE LED BY MENWOMEN IN FAMILY-OWNED BUSINESSES, By ELAINE ALLEN, PHD; NAN S. LANGOWITZ, DBA; August 2003
20. FAMILY TIES – BINDING, BONDING OR BREAKING? Nigel Nicholson, Prof of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School, www.london.edu/family_business.
21. DISTRIBUTION, GROWTH, AND PERFORMANCE OF MICROFINANCE INSTITUTIONS IN AFRICA, ASIA, AND LATIN AMERICA Cécile Lapenu and Manfred Zeller, International Food Policy Research Institute, June 2001