Can microfinance programs heal rape victims in Congo?
There are so many bits of reporting that never make it out of my notebooks, so many interesting things I learn that I can鈥檛 use in the space I have. Sometimes, one of those bits just keeps pestering me. Right now, it鈥檚 this one.
Earlier this year, I did a pretty massive report on the use of rape as a tool of war, for Congressional Quarterly 笔谤别蝉蝉鈥� (subscription). I talked at length with Desiree Zwanck, the gender advisor at Heal Africa, a hospital in Goma, eastern DRC, about how women recover from rape. I thought we鈥檇 talk about medicine and social stigma. Instead, we talked about money.
Not exclusively. But the most interesting thing I learned from Zwanck was this: Micro-credit programs were doing the kind of work usually attributed to psycho-social counseling. They restored women鈥檚 sense of self-worth. They bolstered women鈥檚 respect in the community. They returned women, in their own homes, to productive partners in their families. Zwanck told me, 鈥淎 lot of families here are in such dire need that they are actually more inclined to accept the woman back into the household when there is an economic incentive for it.鈥�
I can feel the well-intentioned, anti-neo-colonial, pro-feminist bile rise, but hold on a second: This is not one of those moments where things look all rosy but when you peel back the Otherness, you鈥檙e appalled at all the theoretical sins being committed. Micro-credit works in part, Zwanck said, because it accepts how Congolese women view themselves.
鈥淥f course from a Western perspective, you鈥檇 say this actually reduces the woman again to just a material gain, [something] a family can get out of her. It focuses on her productive capacity and not on her value as a human being,鈥� Zwanck acknowledges. 鈥淏ut鈥heir perception of themselves is not so much individual as it is part of their families, and of their vision of their families. When you say how has this micro-credit helped you, they will say, 鈥淲ell, my children鈥︹�� 鈥� they will talk about other people.鈥�
Okay, I鈥檒l slow down a minute: 鈥渨orks鈥� by what metric? That鈥檚 a good question. I wasn鈥檛 doing M&E on Zwanck鈥檚 micro-credit program. I don鈥檛 know the loan return rate, I don鈥檛 know how many businesses stay open for how long, I don鈥檛 know how many men steal their wives鈥� money. But what I liked about what Zwanck had to say is that the point of the micro-credit, in our conversations, wasn鈥檛 any of those things. It was actually the 鈥減sycho-social needs of rape survivors,鈥� a phrase you鈥檒l see all over reports from the region, and sometimes in news stories, and one which I often find on its own stultifying and objectifying. But micro-credit wasn鈥檛 any of those things; it was, to borrow another overused word, empowering.
鈥� Jina Moore is a reporter who blogs at .
