Roushane Zafar—An Economist Activist for Women’s Empowerment

by Richard H. Curtiss

“Kashaff means to bring out what is hidden, to make apparent what is within. It is the process of self-development, of self-actualization and social empowerment. It is the process by which women can come together as a group and pool their resources, both intellectual and physical, and ultimately improve their economic status and that of their families.”

—From the mission statement of the Kashaff Foundation, Lahore, Pakistan

One of Pakistan’s newest NGOs in the crowded human rights/women’s rights field is the Kashaff Foundation, established in November 1995. It is the brainchild of 29-year-old Roushane Zafar, who has a B.A. from the Wharton School of Finance in Philadelphia, and an M.A. in development economics from Yale University.

Upon returning to Pakistan, with her economics background and inspired by her father, a former Pakistani minister of Justice who for many years has headed the Human Rights Society of Pakistan, Ms. Zafar set out to help empower the women of her country as an economic development strategy. She explains that of the two alternative approaches to alleviating poverty, “wealth distribution” and “wealth creation,” only the second leads to a sustained increase in economic opportunities because it creates independent entrepreneurs. Her newly created organization seeks to contribute to Pakistan’s economic development by adopting what has been called the Grameen Bank approach, best known in the United States through its successful efforts in Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan), one of the world’s poorest countries.

By working with her country’s financial institutions, Ms. Zafar and her colleagues in Kashaff will seek to help women in Pakistan obtain the credit they need to become economically self-sufficient or to pay for a significant share of their families’ economic needs.

Kashaff will help organize borrower groups of five members in villages, with members collectively accountable for repayment of loans by individual borrowers. These groups will be organized into centers comprising 8 to 10 groups, which will constitute the point of interaction between self-employed women and the Kashaff Foundation.

Initial loans to first time borrowers will be Rs 4,000 ($133), and these will be increased in the second year to Rs 6,000 and the third year to Rs 8,000. Each loan will be repayable over a period of 12 months in either weekly or monthly installments, with access to the higher loans dependent, of course, upon repayment records. All of the loans will be made for only one purpose—to generate productive income for the recipients.

“The project is primarily to empower women,” Ms. Zafar says. “It is a part of human rights, and one day people will recognize that to empower women is to empower people.”

The loans Kashaff negotiates for the borrower groups will be without collateral, Ms. Zafar explains. “We are a financial intermediary.”

She has a commitment from the government of Switzerland to help conduct a pilot project, which will be based to a large extent on the successful operation of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, a program that owes its inception to U.S. foreign aid money.

“We have moved a lot beyond the organizational stage,” Ms. Zafar reports. We hope to be making our very first loans in a matter of weeks.” The pilot project will adopt three villages where total family income is about Rs.2,500 a month and holdings are about 21/2 acres per family.

The borrowing groups will be self-selected, and they will provide peer pressure on the individual borrowers to meet the terms to which they have agreed. Ms. Zafar describes this as an alternative to the World Bank’s “trickle down approach.”

In all of her organization’s work, however, Ms. Zafar, plans to stick to the sound financial principles she studied in the United States. “Basic principles in the U.S. or in Pakistan,” she points out, “are very similar.”

So, clearly, are the ideas emanating from the top levels of Pakistan’s leadership. In her statement to the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo on Sept. 5, 1994, Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto, the only Muslim woman prime minister present, said to the thousands of world leaders present:

“How do we tackle population growth in a country like Pakistan? We tackle it by tackling infant mortality. By providing villages with electrification. By raising an army of women, 33,000 strong, to educate our mothers, sisters, and daughters in child welfare and population control. By setting up a bank run by women for women, to help women achieve economic independence. And with economic independence, to have the wherewithal to make independent choices.”