Exploring Savings Culture Among Rural Women in Kashari County, Mbarara District

Abstract

Rural women are among the most financially excluded populations in the world due to myriad formal and informal barriers to formal financial services. A lot of research has been conducted on promoting women’s empowerment using microcredit in Uganda, but there has been little research on savings culture of rural women specifically in Kashari county, Mbarara district. This paper is part of the PhD study that addresses this gap through a qualitative study of women savings and investment groups in the seven sub-counties of Kashari in North western Mbarara. The results that form this paper point to a strong desire by rural women in Kashari County to plan for their future and the future of their family members through starting or joining savings groups to enhance family incomes. The study further reveals that women belong to three main categories of groups namely: self-help groups, savings groups, and savings and investment groups. Regardless of the nature of the saving and investments groups they belong in, their main goal is to inculcate the culture of saving and investing whatever little earning they get. Results further suggest that groups are largely informal and women prefer to remain as informal as possible, making them formal would subject them to paying taxes, be controlled by government bodies and subsequently make them lose their esteemed savings and profits. The paper concludes that savings culture among women through savings groups is a key ingredient towards sustainable empowerment of women in the 21st century. Much as there are no visible signs of equality, we argue that enhancement of savings culture through savings groups has given Kashari rural women the power to take control over their daily lives which hitherto was not the case.