Assessment of gender perspective on village savings and loans associations in the Akuapem North Municipality, Ghana

Abstract

This study assessed the gender perspectives in Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs) in the Akuapem-North Municipality of the Eastern Region of Ghana. This was based on the premise that since the formation of these community-based financial services in in 2009, though females form the majority of the membership, i.e. 70.7%, males who are rather in the minority have been dominating in the administration of the groups thereby enjoying most of the benefits at the detriment of the females. The methodology employed purposive, convenience and simple random sampling techniques to sample 7 VSLAs and 110 members (with 67.3% females and 32.7% males) out of a population 516 members from 15 VSLAs. The demographic characteristics of the respondents showed that majority of them i.e. 86.4% were in the productive working age of 18 to 59 years with most of them being Christians and married. The main findings were that although females accounted for 70.5% of the sample, their representation on the executives were only 57.1%. Also, whereas the men mostly occupied the most influential positions of president and secretary, the women were normally holding the lower treasurer and tellers’ posts. The major cause of these problems was found to be high female illiteracy and their lack of will to take up leadership positions in the presence of men. The main recommendations here are to encourage the illiterate women to be educated through non-formal education, sensitize the women to take up the presidency position of which education is not a critical requirement, form single-sex VSLAs, and getting all girls educated to forestall the problem in the future. Also financial literacy and business enterprise development training are recommended to ensure that women are able to utilize their capital very well for greater wealth to boost their confidence.