As a social entrepreneur involved in fighting poverty through awareness and economic empowerment I am often asked about our exclusive preference to do so by using women as the exclusive change agent. People tend to question this bias. The question generally is raised by specially those who are not exposed to the development paradigm as it has evolved over time.

In our field, we refer to women as the strategic gender. Those who question our female preference generally know the answer but they do so in their elements and again generally do not connect the issues to get to the bottom of it. Why do we refer to women as the strategic gender? We know that awareness varies inversely with the level of deprivation. Greater the level of deprivation, lower is the degree of awareness. Let us keep ourselves focused on economic deprivation.

It’s a common knowledge that awareness and economic empowerment lead to sustainable fight against poverty. It’s also an accepted fact that an aware mother will keep her children aware. If women are economically empowered they will have greater right to have a say in the daily life of the family. And it’s also an accepted fact that a socially empowered mother will strive the hardest and will put priority on making her children aware through education. And education is the greatest poverty buster as it empowers and creates awareness.

Having laid out the general dynamics let’s take the remaining space in expanding the theme. As has been borne out by our experience and the experience of various international development agencies, a programme of women empowerment through microcredit and a 360° awareness building has a huge impact. Providing small investible sum in the hands of a poor woman with family and teaching her the use of money along with related awareness issues creates a source of earning for her.

As a DFID study on families in the char of the river Jamuna, which corroborates our experience, shows that in as little as 18 months the women have greater economic independence. That empowered them to have a say in family issues like children’s education, number of children the couple should go for, household expenditure specially in the choice between necessary and wasteful expenditure, investing in stuff that would help generate further stream of income. Also the incidents of family violence also tends to decrease. And these are the stuff that the poverty alleviation programmes target at.

Disempowered women hardly realise that by limiting their ability/right to move in social spaces, men tend to take away their right to awareness. However, it’s important to realise that awareness is a necessary condition for empowerment. However just being will not earn them the empowerment they search for. They need to be economically empowered too. Once they are put on this track, their self esteem goes up and by gaining greater say in the family issue they regenerate the cycle of empowerment thereby making the process sustainable.

Why not men? The empirical and experiential evidence shows, as has been explained above, that investing in women has a bigger impact – that’s why.