Breathe
By Adriana García
I am proudly from one of the municipalities with the smallest population in the state of Jalisco, Mexico. One of the great advantages of growing up in such a small town, besides enjoying a lot of tranquility and breathing fresh air, is the closeness between people. I love being able to say hello by name to someone I pass on the street and tell my husband something about that person, a bit of their history or their family.
In that context, I was fortunate to get to know many people even more closely because as a child I helped my mom in her "corner store" (a common format in Mexico that usually includes a grocery store, pharmacy, gifts, stationery and more). There I learned firsthand incredible stories, many of them from women entrepreneurs.
Naturally, the first story of an entrepreneurial woman I knew was that of my mother, a surgeon and midwife with the spirit of a businesswoman. This spirit permeated my family: my younger sister became a successful entrepreneur with two beauty products stores, and my sister-in-law opened her own grocery store and beauty salon.
There are many women's names that parade in my head right now as I try to remember the entrepreneurs I met in that store. Sarita, the lady who went for potatoes and cabbage to sell the best golden tacos I have ever tasted; Chela, the lady who went for zippers, threads and needles for her sewing workshop; Mari, the lady who went for lemons and salt to offer them with her roasted corn in the plaza; Doña Lucía, the lady who went for milk, sugar and vanilla to sell hielitos (ice cream in plastic bags) in her house. I also met other women who had a movie rental business (in times when we had access to multimedia content through VHS and DVD) and a stone mine.
Although there are few women's businesses that I have seen expand, most of them have survived and grown stronger over the years. And although they are small businesses, for these women they represent an important source of income for their families, sources of employment for other women and, above all, a form of independence and freedom for themselves.
You may wonder how they started and how these businesses have developed. Many of them received seed capital from a family member, usually their mother. Others started with money from remittances sent by their relatives in the United States or Canada. Others, as in the case of Chela, benefited from government programs to equip her sewing workshop and provide employment for her sisters. Most, however, resorted to tandas, also known as "cundinas". And there are few cases, such as the owner of the stone mine, who obtained bank loans.
Bank loans are less popular among women entrepreneurs in the context I describe for three main reasons. First, because in my village there were no bank branches until a year ago, when the Welfare Bank arrived; the nearest commercial bank is 20 minutes away in the neighboring village. Many of these women do not know how to drive, do not have a car, and there is no public transportation to connect these towns, so they would have to pay a (relatively expensive) cab to get around. Second, even for those who can easily go to the other village, it is very likely that these women do not qualify for a loan. Among the many obstacles they may face, I am afraid the most important is that they do not have collateral (property or material goods in their name) to present to the institution. Third, even if they could travel and present collateral, women entrepreneurs in this context are distrustful, fearful and uninformed about banks and the products and services they offer. Stories of telephone scams by people pretending to be bank employees or stories of bad first-hand experiences are very influential among them.
Therefore, it is no coincidence that the family and the aforementioned tandas are the main source of resources for women. In a small village, the support network of family, friends and neighbors is very important for the functioning of daily life, including the business. They are based on trust, but tandas specifically have two additional components that make them work successfully: social pressure and reputation. When a group of women get together and make a recurring contribution of a fixed amount of money every few years, there is a risk that one of them will default. However, the leader is responsible for carefully choosing who enters the group to lessen that risk. The history that precedes each woman and her family is a powerful tool for inclusion or exclusion in the tandas. Reputation is an excellent driver of compliance, and social pressure becomes a powerful weapon in the event of noncompliance.
With all this, I do not mean to say that one way of starting and running a women-led venture in such contexts is better than another. I am simply sharing these stories as seen through the lens I am wearing. Also, I deeply wish to continue sharing more stories of women with more and better opportunities for entrepreneurship, so that they can become more and more independent and free.
* Adriana García is a research professor at the FAIR Center and the Research Group in the Financial Innovation Thematic Area of the School of Business of the Tecnológico de Monterrey. She is a member of the National System of Researchers Level I and has conducted research on the social impact of microfinance in Bolivia and Africa. His work has reached publications in books and articles in prestigious scientific journals and has participated in international conferences in France, United States, Bolivia and Oxford University.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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