Maria is Bolivian and is 40 years old. As thousands of women around the world, he never thought that she would be who bring the money home. But thanks to a small loan that gave him an NGO launched a micro-enterprise that she and their children live. It has a small clothing store. Mary is a woman who has managed to be the protagonist of his own life. Seven out of ten people who are hungry in the world are women, according to the UN. Women provide two-thirds of working hours. They, however, only have 10% of global income and 1% of the means of production.
Thus, birth women having more likely to live in poverty, be marginalized and more vulnerable to the violation of fundamental rights. Muhhammad Yunus, Economist and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, was one of the first to give these women a chance. He believed in them and decided that 95% of its beneficiaries of the Bank for the poor, Grammen Bank, were women. Since its inception in 1976 he realized that women When they had income the first thing they did was to retrieve their children, who had left in rich families in exchange for food, and send them to school. Until today, more than 100 million families have benefited from micro-credit and more than 40 million families have managed to climb out of extreme poverty.
When the loan enters a family through a woman, the benefits go directly to the well-being of the family, explained from the microfinance movement. Women spend 70% of the loan to improve the quality of life of their family, compared to 30% of the men engaged. According to United Nations, if offers women the same support as men, these increase the crop yields by 20%. In Morocco, for example, Spain has invested 45 million euros in microcredit and women have generated more than doubled, according to the Spanish Agency of international cooperation for development.