One of the things I’ve been privileged to do in my ten years at Opportunity International Australia, is meet lots and lots of women. I’ve met them in the Philippines, China, India - rural Madhya Pradesh, urban Delhi, semi-urban environments like Kurnool and in remote locations like Varanasi. So, I’ve met hundreds of women in different contexts, widely different cultures, but it’s funny - they all say the same thing.

The first thing these women say to me is they want financial services. They’re prepared to pay for them as long as they are convenient and reasonably priced.  There’s strong demand for the financial services we offer – small loans to build businesses, savings accounts, insurance. We’re exploring ways of making them more convenient, like using mobile phones to enable delivery of the loan as well as repayments and we are making them more specialised to meet the specific needs of families living in different places. We’re looking at more efficient ways of providing financial services – again using mobile phones - so our costs are lower and we can reduce the interest rates to make our services more affordable. That’s the first answer to the question.

The second answer to the question is an interesting one. It comes when I say things like: “You’re now getting financial services, you have some views on how they can be better, but why are you doing this?” and “What is it you want in your life?” and “What’s the end if financial services are the means?”

And women very commonly say: “I’m doing this so I can provide something for my children,” and “I want my children to be educated, to live a different life to the one I’ve lived.” They say: “I’ll never move, but I don’t want my children to bring up their children here.” I’ve heard this in a slum built on stilts and mud flats in Manila Bay and I’ve heard exactly the same thing in a very poor rural village in the middle of Uttar Pradesh. They hope their children will finish high school, go to college or university, get a good job and live somewhere better.

One woman whose dream came true for her child is the mother of a young man I met in Delhi – Mukul. When I met him a few years ago, Mukul was heading a technology startup. When he learned I was from Opportunity, his face beamed and he told me his life story. He grew up in a remote rural area in North India and his family was so poor they considered taking Mukul out of school because they couldn’t afford to pay his school fees. His mother was determined to give Mukul a good education, so she applied for a small loan from Opportunity to buy some goats. With the income she earnt from selling goat milk, she kept Mukul in school, he went to university then worked in business. Such an inspiring story of a young man’s journey from poverty to opportunity!  His mother’s sacrifice changed everything. She built a bridge for him to a new life.

None of this has a statistical basis but I’ve spoken to hundreds of women over the years and this is the answer I’ve heard with consistency. They want the opportunity to invest in their children’s futures and they want to see them live lives that are not the same as their own. They want their children to have a career, move away, they want their children to contribute to a generational change in income, in opportunity, in location and in the potential of their lives. The women see their lives as somewhat circumscribed by circumstance, but they want to break those constraints with their children and that is what I would say is the answer to the question: “What do women want?

If you would like women in developing countries to access financial services to build businesses so they can put food on the table and send their children to school click here.