| dc.description.abstract | Village saving and loans associations (VSLAs) play critical roles in many countries, including
Uganda, towards financial inclusion overall. VSLAs are critical in working towards two key
components to financial inclusion: financial literacy and access to financial services. More than
half of the adult population in Uganda either saves or borrows through this community-based
service platform, and they are by far Uganda’s leading source of credit. VSLAs are successful
in creating income-generating activities and the benefits are evident. However, little is known
about its leadership. In Uganda, women dominate in the number of members in the VSLAs but
are yet underrepresented in its leadership positions.
As this thesis is written to investigate gender gaps in the leadership of VSLAs in Uganda, it
builds upon the findings made from the report by the multi-disciplinary research team assessing
Women’s Leadership in VSLAs in Uganda. Two main contributions are made from this thesis,
where the first entails a thorough investigation of how gender gaps in VSLA leadership can be
measured and explained. The second entails an examination of whether there are gender
differences in the perception of leaders considered influential. The latter is studied to find
evidence for structural barriers such as VSLA gender composition restricting women from
being influential leaders.
With these main contributions in mind, this thesis structures the content into two parts: Part A
and Part B. Part A provides a thorough introduction to the theory and literature and presents
the theoretical frameworks that describe the theories behind the research problem. It dives into
two theories explaining gender gaps in leadership through the theory of discrimination and
variations in observable characteristics. The theories of discrimination explain the notion of
taste-based- and statistical-discrimination. The other theory, attributing the gender gap to
differences in psychological attributes, preferences and attitudes.
The overall findings are pronounced and presented in Part B. The findings from the analyses
made from this thesis happen to be very much consistent with the existing literature. Much of
the gender gap in leadership is explained by observable characteristics, in particular by the fact
that women have lower levels of education than men in the sample. The findings from the
second investigation show that the fraction of listed influential females increases more than
proportionate to the fraction of females in the VSLAs, where most men do not consider women
in equal positions influential. | en_US |
