Welcome to my Space: Health, Empowerment & Finances for Everyday Women

Hi.

If you’re reading this, chances are you have seen me write about physical fitness and exercise, watched my Zumba videos or read a few of my thoughts about personal finance.

Or not!

Whatever the case, you’re welcome here.

This space is where I intend to turn my random posts into more regular pieces about the intersection between financial inclusion for women, gender equality and women’s health.

 To explore how improving women’s access to financial information and education can give them choices.

Over the last 20 years or so, my work in the non-profit sector has given me insights into the intersections between women’s access to resources and their health. 

How poor health limits women’s opportunities and potential, and deepens their economic disadvantages including the ability to work and earn a living.

 How, when women lack access to finances, it curtails their access to health services including reproductive and mental health.

I met women who, in order to access family planning services, had to hide their decision from their partners or face gender based violence for choosing to exercise their reproductive health agency.  Women who struggled to leave abusive relationships because they were financially dependent on their partner.

According to UNFPA, the UN reproductive health agency, women happen are the face of poverty.  And the impacts are not only harsh, but deeply gendered:

• The gender pay gap: Globally, women still earn 20 per cent less than men for work of equal value.
• Out-of-pocket payments for healthcare, particularly in low-income settings like my country Uganda can trap women in cycles of poverty.
•  Cultural norms and stereotypes socialize women to be less interested in money or discouraged from making independent decisions, undermining both their health and financial wellbeing.
•   Fewer women save formally; women are 6 percent less likely than men to save with formal financial service providers.
•  Most financial education programs aren’t designed with women's realities in mind: caregiving responsibilities, time poverty, informal employment, or lack of collateral for loans.
• Women, though great savers, hesitate to invest due to fear or lack of confidence despite evidence showing women often outperform men in investing.

While some of my professional work experiences exposed me to the stark realities facing women, it did also offer proof of what happens when women are educated about health, about finances, about gender equality.

I  visited health clinics and saw how pregnant women who had been educated about the importance of antenatal care and delivering at a health facility, slowly put away money to prepare for health visits.

How women came together to save and buy or grow healthier food for their children.

How they made choices to have children after careful planning.  

And that is what  inspires me to carry on. To use my words to help educate even more women about how financial independence can empower them to take control of their lives.

To challenge societal norms, and encourage women to actively participate in investment decisions starting small, diversifying their investments, and growing.

I bring to this space my journalist’s curiosity, learner’s determination, and storyteller’s heart.

I will research, reflect, and write so you can find something helpful, comforting, and, hopefully, inspiring, in the words I share.

By Martha Songa
miss.songa@gmail.com