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Lending with Agency: Lessons from The History of Doing
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When Radha Kumar published The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of the Women’s Movement in India, 1800–1990, she gave readers not just a history, but a portrait of resilience. Through essays, archival records, and visual documentation, Kumar captures how women in India fought for voice, dignity, and participation—against both colonial structures and domestic patriarchy.
The book spans nearly two centuries, documenting struggles for education, labor rights, political representation, and personal autonomy. Its title is telling: women were never passive recipients of change; they shaped it through action—through “doing.”
For today’s financial ecosystem, particularly lending, Kumar’s work is more than history. It’s a blueprint for empathetic design. If women fought so hard to carve out agency in public and private life, then lending systems that ignore that history risk repeating the exclusions of the past.
Women’s Movements and the Question of Agency
Kumar shows how women’s early demands were often dismissed as “secondary” issues. Education for girls, equal wages for women laborers, or reforms in marriage laws were sidelined against “larger” national struggles. But as activists like Pandita Ramabai, Sarojini Naidu, and countless grassroots leaders proved, these were not minor demands—they were the foundations of dignity.
In lending, we see a similar hierarchy of priorities. Credit for infrastructure or large corporates is treated as “serious,” while small-ticket loans to women entrepreneurs are seen as “developmental add-ons.” Yet evidence is clear: women borrowers, when given direct access to credit, often exhibit higher repayment rates, stronger community impacts, and a focus on family welfare.
The struggle to recognize their agency continues—not on the streets of colonial India, but in loan approval committees and credit algorithms.
Patriarchy and Credit: The Silent Continuity
Kumar documents how patriarchal norms restricted women’s participation in public life. In many cases, women could work, but their wages were controlled by male relatives. They could be educated, but their marriageability was still judged more important. Even reform movements often negotiated with patriarchy rather than dismantled it.
This history resonates uncomfortably with credit practice seven today. In some regions, women still need male consent to secure loans. Microfinance loans are often issued in women’s names but controlled by husbands or fathers. The rhetoric is empowerment; the reality is surveillance.
When platforms fail to embed safeguards for women’s financial autonomy, they risk re-inscribing patriarchal control into digital credit. Kumar’s book reminds us: progress without structural change is illusion.
Lending as Participation, Not Permission
Women’s movements, as Kumar shows, were never only about individual gains. They were about participation—being recognized as equals in shaping society. From the All India Women’s Conference in 1927 to the Chipko Movement in the 1970s, the demand was not charity, but partnership.
The same applies to lending. True inclusion means treating women as active participants in economic growth, not as peripheral or high-risk segments. Empathetic lending is not about “giving women loans”, it is about creating platforms where women borrowers have control, transparency, and voice.
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