Poor urban settlements and female financial self-helping clubs (Southern Districts of Tehran,Iran)

During recent decades in Iran, there has been a great deal of antipoverty and surviving efforts in informal and poor urban settlements. This trend primarily is not exclusively focusing on civil or human rights. While such rights are important and women tend to be more pertinent to urban middle and elite classes and not necessarily those from low income households. In our research findings indicate that economic hardship is their most important concern. Close to a third of the samples were divorced (some single headed households) or abandoned by their husbands, one fifth were married to men with drug addiction (since the fall of the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan the number of drug addicts in Iran has increased exponentially), the rest was either taking care of a sick or disabled husband or their husbands were in jail and in some cases husbands were simply unemployed. However, these women not only had managed to create jobs in the informal sector but also they had set up rotating credit clubs. These clubs generated funds that were channeled into business activities as well as building a safety net for their members. Moreover, many of our samples had joined self-help groups which built economic and community solidarity. In this research have been selected a sample of 200 interviewees based on snow ball sampling selected from four different low income municipalities in the South of Tehran (Districts 17, 18, 19 and 20). We also have used standardized questionnaire with some open ended questions. This has been complemented by interviews with policy makers, academics and advocates of anti poverty programs. The hypotheses were that a) self-employed women of low income households have entered into the job informal market to increase their economic status; b) low economic power has led to fulfillment and enhancement socio-financial networks between poor self-employed women and c) These female clubs hadn’t especial effects on improvement of their status or settlements. Our finding suggests that a) economic rights are more important for low income women than civil rights and b) in spite of major economic challenges, these women were successful in creating opportunities for themselves in the informal sector through self-help groups and rotating credit clubs and energized their communal solidarity. As results women in poor urban settlements had formed financial self-helping clubs (FSCs) in order to improve economical power and to gain control over their economic activities. They also were not able to get loans or grants to change their status and settlements; however FSCs have not efficient effects on their poverty.