Empowerment and microfinancing

Since the middle of the 1980s, cooperation agents, international organizations, non-government organizations, and governments inspired by the work of Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, as well as by the Nairobi World Conference in 1985, divulged that microfinances have the potential to transform power relations and grant power to the poor, so they began to finance microcredit projects in rural zones and especially for women ^{(Allen, 2012)}. This momentum was greater in the decade of 1990 with the height of neoliberalism, since, inscribed in the market logic microfinances are considered an effective tool to reduce poverty while providing employment and the possibility to build microenterprises. Therefore, many microfinance programs were promoted, both in the private sector and through the governments ^{(Gutiérrez Pastor, 2012}; ^{Mayoux, 2008}; ^{Cheston and Kuhn, 2001)}. It is convenient to underline that in México this drive has been centered on microcredit, leaving aside other aspects of microfinances, such as savings, insurance and remittances ^{(Tuñón et al., 2007}; ^{Valdez and Hidalgo, 2004)}.

Concerning the relationship between microcredits and feminine empowerment, various studies describe the feminine experiences in microfinancing programs ^{(Vázquez Luna et al., 2013}; ^{Castro, 2010}; ^{Tuñón et al., 2010}; ^{Pérez et al., 2008}; ^{Riaño and Okali, 2008}; ^{Cardero, 2008}; ^{Tuñón et al., 2007}; ^{Varela, 2007}; ^{Zapata et al., 2004}; ^{Zapata et al., 2003}; ^{Vázquez et al., 2002}; ^{Cheston and Khun, 2001)}. In this regard, ^{Zapata et al. (2003:104)} point out that “in the case of women who manage microcredits, empowerment must be a self-generated, conscious process, with regards to something, an interest, a need”. ^{Gutiérrez Pastor (2012:135)} mentions that studies show that microfinance programs contribute to “transforming the power relations and give power to the poor, especially women”; and ^{Varela (2007)} states that women identify the possibility of creating their own business or improving the one they had and, with this, feeling useful and independent, such as the main benefit that microcredit gives them.

Rowlands’ tridimensional model of empowerment

For ^{Rowlands (1997:224)}, empowerment is “a set of psychological processes which, when developed, allow the individual or the group to act or interact with their environment, in a way that increases their access to power and its use in several forms”. The author mentions that empowerment can be seen in three dimensions: the personal, which relates to changes in the woman as a person and is expressed in the development of trust and the sense of being; the dimension of close relations, which are represented in the connections to family and spouse, and about which Rowlands expresses that this generally constitutes the most difficult area of change because it is a space that can be both supporting and caring, and a place of struggle and disempowerment; and the collective dimension, which includes the connections that are established with the group, community or context for joint work and to achieve a higher impact than would be reached individually.

^{Rowlands (1997: 225)} points out that empowerment is “a personal and different process, since each has his/her own unique life experience”, and that the processes vary according to the context and do not take place in a linear manner insofar as sometimes advances are made in one dimension, but there are setbacks in others and because in each dimension there are factors that drive and promote or inhibit women’s empowerment. In Rowlands’ work, the concept of power turns out to be central in the theme of empowerment and, in an exercise to understand it, the author distinguishes four types on which it is based: Power over, which represents a controlling power that implies the ability to make another person or group do something against their will; Power for, which is persuasive and more productive insofar as it promotes processes of leadership for a person or group to reach their goals; Power with, which represents the collaborative power that, based on relations between equals, awakens the sensation that the sum of individual wills has a great effect on the solution of problems; and Power from within, which is based on the acceptance and respect for themselves and which gives confidence to reach goals and establish horizontal relationships with other men and women.

With Rowlands, we understand empowerment as a process of change that begins within the person and involves positive modifications that range from self-confidence, an increase in the capacity for decision, and an increase of personal conviction, to the ability to transform unequal relationships and develop the collective capacity to modify structures of subordination. The latter is expressed in the participation of organizations and the development of leadership where a more cooperative rather than competitive sense predominates.

About the MES program

The MES program constitutes a state policy of microfinancing that has been implemented for three successive government periods. It was created during the 2000-2006 six-year period in the Deputy Secretary’s Office of Social Economy-Banmujer (Subsecretaría de Economía Social-Banmujer) with the purpose of dispersing credits for poor women through two microcredit programs: “A Seed to Grow” (Una Semilla para Crecer, USPC), directed at poor women organized into solidary groups of 12 to 20 people with the amount of $500 to $2000, which was destined to small-scale businesses related to informal commerce; and “Social Microenterprises” (Microempresas Sociales, MES) which, although at the beginning financed groups of men with credits of $20 000 to $50 000, was later directed towards groups of two to five women and reduced the backing to amounts of $10 000 to $20 000. The financing model contemplated that the women who moved through all the USPC phases could continue later in the MES. During this first period the participation of women with a trajectory in feminism and with a clear vision of gender equity and empowerment in the design of these programs stood out. Among their actions, performing workshops for the strengthening of self-esteem and to promote the empowerment and leadership of women stood out, as well as the emphasis that they displayed, both in the training of middle-level public servants, technicians and beneficiaries of the programs, and in divulging and elaborating didactic materials that are accessible to women (books, brochures, plates, felt-boards, flip boards, and manuals).

During the period of 2006-2012, important structural changes took place that impacted the amount of financing allotted and the training processes. In 2009, the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment (Secretaría de Empoderamiento de las Mujeres, SEDEM) was created, which, although in its executive order establishes that it has the purpose of “performing actions, promotion and encouragement to attain the full development of women” ^{(Gobierno del Estado de Chiapas, 2010:3)}, through the program “Women Working United” (Mujeres Trabajando Unidas, MTU) gradually weakened the training offered in the prior period and free workshops began to be given on crafts and cooking. It should be pointed out that in this period many of the founding women of MES, and who had given a clear gender perspective to its operation, abandoned this government agency.

The last period corresponds to the current six-year-period of 2012-2018, where although the microfinancing programs by SEDEM continue to be USPC and MES, they occupy a secondary place in face of the subsidy program for single mothers “Welfare from Heart to Heart” (Bienestar de Corazón a Corazón), which places women in a passive role, reinforces a handout mentality and promotes a spoils system. The training program inherited from the previous program and now known as “Women Working United by Heart” (Mujeres Trabajando Unidas de Corazón) is focused on offering workshops in traditional embroidery, handbags with ribbon embroidering, painting on fabric, confectionary, candle making, fantasy embroidery, baking and enterprising vision (SEDEM, 2014:9), in a very different logic from what was promoted at the beginning of the MES.

Sociodemographic aspects, use and perception of microcredit

More than half of the beneficiaries from our sample are between 30 and 50 years of age (53.8 %). The group of women 51 years and older represents 34.9 %, while that of younger ones, 18 to 29, includes 6.9 %. Of the beneficiaries, 7.6 % does not have any schooling; 23.4 % expressed that they have unconcluded primary; 31 % studied up to primary school; 20.2 %, secondary; 6.9 % high school; and 10.8 % studied a technical or professional career. Regarding their marital status, eight out of ten are married or have a couple (79.8 %), almost all have two or three children who are still economically dependent on them because they don’t work or are infants (95.5 %) and 46.2 % live in households made up of two to four people. Regarding the domestic activities and the help they receive, 97.5 % are housewives, 72 % devote four to eight hours daily to domestic activities without receiving pay, and 57o% receive help for domestic labor. More than half of the latter receive help from their daughters (51.1 %); 24.2 % hire people for domestic service, paying up to $120 daily; 22.3 % have help from another woman in her family network (mother, aunt, niece, cousin, god-daughter, daughter-in-law or mother-in-law), and only 22 % receive help from their sons. These data show the reproduction of traditional gender roles inside the family units of MES beneficiaries.

Although all of the women received financing from MES, 26 % declared being exclusively devoted to the household, and 74 % also carry out another activity. From these, 64.9 % attend to their businesses (double workday), 32.5 % attend their business and are also paid workers (triple workday), and 2.6 % are devoted to studying and also collaborate in domestic activities. Regarding the use of microcredit, we have that, although all the women in the sample (n=158) received financing from MES, only eight out of ten stated having used the microcredit from the program to establish a microenterprise (77.8 %). From the remaining 22.2 %, 21 women destined it to the strengthening of a family business that a masculine member of the family executes (husband, father, brother or son); six kept the money to cover contingencies, such as diseases, deaths, graduations and travels; six more used it to pay debts and two other to build something or pay for tuition, which shows the lack of real institutional monitoring to understand how microcredit is used by the beneficiaries.

The businesses that predominate are the following: 41 % correspond to the sale of groceries, vegetables, fruits, seafood, beef and chicken; 19 % to catalog sales; 15 % to elaborating and selling food; 14 % to services like beauty shops, tailor shops, repair shops, drugstores, internet café and tortilla shops; 10 % to hand crafts elaboration and sale; and 1 % to livestock production and agriculture. It should be mentioned that 60 % of the businesses are in the retail sales area (sale of groceries, perishables, and catalog products) and that in 14 % of the service businesses there are those in which women are fronts or where male family members use the microcredit.

About the physical conditions from where they operate the businesses, it should be mentioned that more than half of the women develop them at home (58 %), 26 % sell on the street or door-to-door, and only 16.1 % has a formal shop. A theme to reflect upon is whether the businesses that they establish, where they establish them and sell their products, allows them or not to have a clear limit between what corresponds to work and unpaid family reproduction and the business. Regarding the sphere of influence or the reach that the businesses have, it stands out that 66 % sell their products in the district or neighborhood where they live, which implies that very likely their clients are family members or neighbors; 20.3 % sells them in the local market and nearby localities; and 13 % in other municipalities, in the state capital or outside of Chiapas.

In general, the income that micro-businesswomen receive are small, which explains that they are businesses that contribute fundamentally to the daily survival and very few generate assets. Thus, eight out of ten women (77.2 %) declare receiving income from their business and 22.8 % state that they do not make any income. Among those who do receive income from their business, in the extremes, we find that 65o% say they receive a weekly income of up to $500 and only 5.6 % up to $1000 or more. Regarding the destination or use of the income received in their microbusinesses, it stands out that eight out of ten women use them to purchase food for the family (77.6 %). In a lower proportion the income is destined to contingencies such as diseases, deaths, travels, graduations and family celebrations (11.9 %), paying debts (7 %), and in absolute numbers only one to three women use it to build something or pay tuition, buy something for themselves (clothes, shoes or cosmetics), or purchase articles for the household (furniture and electrical appliances).

Regarding the perception that women have about the impact of the program, slightly over half of the beneficiaries considers that microcredit has served them little (50.6 %), while 28.5 % and 20.9o% state that it has served them much and nothing, respectively. Although 50.6 % considers that the microcredit has served them little, 62.9 % of the total points out that the business they were able to develop is good because it is profitable, 30 % say it is fair, and 7 % that it is bad because it generates few or null earnings. In this point, it is worth to wonder about the non-agreement between the valuation of the microcredit sum and the perception of the utility achieved and reported by the women themselves. Next, we show testimonies that value positively the loan received and others that relativize its effect:

“This support from MES is the first one that they give me and it helps a lot. I have been selling pozol at the market for more than 30 years; with it, I bought my maize, my cacao, wholesale, and I got a better price and that’s how I got a little more of profit” (Julieta, 64 years, Berriozábal, 2014, 3rd stage of MES).

“Truth be told, the loan didn’t help me much, it was not a lot of money; I used it to buy an industrial cutter for my workshop but it was not enough. I had to put money from my pocket and then it was really complicated to explain for the verification and receipts; there was a whole mess and I was left not wanting to request it again” (Adriana, 36 years, Tuxtla, 2014, 3rd stage of MES).

Training

The results from the questionnaire indicate that only three out of ten (29.7 %) of the total beneficiaries from our study received some type of training during the cycle of their project. Of the 17 beneficiaries (10.8 % from the sample total) that we could locate and which were supported during the first stage of MES, five expressed having received training in issues of self-esteem, organizational aspects of the business, recovering credits and gender equity. Of the 80 beneficiaries from the second (50.6 % from the sample total), 26 mentioned having been trained in themes of domestic violence, sexual and reproductive rights, women’s rights, human development, leadership, basic aspects of administration and accounting. From the third stage of the program we found 61 beneficiaries (38.6 % from the sample total), of which 16 said they received workshops in handcrafts, confectionary, candle-making, fantasy embroidery and entrepreneurial vision.

The following fragments from interviews carried out with women civil servants from the program in the first and second period account for this process:

“The fundamental part of Banmujer was the training; the USPC program was a hook to move women from the private to the public scope and to bring them information about how to defend their rights, self-esteem, talk about leadership and also to facilitate information about the management of credit, functioning of businesses, accounting things [ ]. The results were good, sometimes better than we thought; we had some that we didn’t expect, such as the training of women leaders and some genuine leadership and which had an effect on good things, but there were others where they learned to exercise control in a traditional way, became allied to groups of power and political parties… there were even beneficiaries participating in the local governments in the coast that learned other practices” (Elena, Delegate from Región I Centro (2001-2005) and Director of Training and productive projects (2005-2011), Tuxtla, 2014).

“We knew that with this microcredit program we had to begin from the bottom; in the training we dealt with quite simple themes of accounting, then self-esteem, human development, assertiveness, our intention was to empower women” (Cinthia, Delegate from Región Altos, (2001-2006), San Cristóbal, 2016).

“Another very nice experience was to have the technical staff become aware of gender and relate to those themes so that working with the women could be more amicable, more human work, so we had many processes of sensitization with the men and women; we worked a lot the issue of establishing empathic relationships, from knocking on doors, greeting them and asking them about their project, to being key agents in conflict resolution in the groups” (Sofía, Head of the Training Department of the Director’s Office of Non-Financial Services from BANMUJER (2000-2009), Tuxtla, 2014).

The beneficiaries who received training during these first stages account for their advancements in the personal dimension of empowerment which, according to what some expressed, consisted in leaving the private space and moving into the public space, and in speaking in name of their peers about issues related to the group:

“The programs of Seed and Enterprises helped us a lot, they gave us workshops, courses, talks in Tuxtla [ ] and with it, I began to step out of my house with more confidence” (Arsenia 39 years, Berriozábal, 2014, 1st stage of MES).

“I was the one, who made the payments for my group and took the papers all the way to Tuxtla each month, and I would tell the Banmujer professionals about my peers’ concerns; I started going by myself. Maybe because of that, and because I took advantage of what they taught us in the workshops, they even chose me and then I would lead the workshops here in the neighborhood” (Ofelia, 65 years, Colonia Emiliano Zapata, Tuxtla, 2014, 1st stage of MES).

During the second stage of MES, the trainings were increasingly more occasional and the themes addressed in the workshops were focused more on the prevention of violence towards women and girls, reproductive health and domestic violence than in promoting empowerment from their productive project as in the first stage, according to what women public servants and beneficiaries expressed:

“Although there were many changes in staff in the Banmujer structure and resource cuts during the six-year-period of 2006-2012, in the area of training we were very clear about our work. We continued performing workshops, but we began to find many stones that were challenges, [ ]; for example, the themes that we had to work with were not the same, we didn’t have support to go to the communities to supervise, monitor and accompany them in the processes. We had to trust in the training that the community trainers gave; we brought them increasingly less to Tuxtla for training” (Sofía, Head of the Training Department of the Director’s Office of Non-Financial Services from BANMUJER (2000-2009), first and second period, Tuxtla, 2014).

“The talks that they gave us over there in the ministry in Tuxtla were about the problems that there are in the family, everything that us women suffer when our husband drinks or beats us, also about how to manage our business and those things, but less often than when we started in La Semillita” (Ada, 43 years, ejido Julián Grajales, Chiapa de Corzo, 2014, 2^nd stage of MES).

Lastly, the following fragments of interviews with one public servant and one beneficiary express the situation of training in the present period:

“Right now nobody is interested in training; to begin with, there are no resources for that, what’s more, there’s almost no money for USPC, much less for MES; it’s not like before when women in the communities were supported. In 2013 only groups in the metropolitan area were backed… There are few resources and nothing for training, the training staff was even let go gradually, it’s not like before…” (Rocío, Head of the Department of microfinancing programs of the Deputy Secretary’s Office of Social Economy-Banmujer of the SEDEM, (2003-2014), Tuxtla, 2013, Third period).

“They called us because they were going to give us courses, but we only went to spend our money on transport because they didn’t teach us anything. There was a person who was teaching how to embroider; I don’t know what kind of embroidery. Since I don’t even like doing that, I didn’t even see it [ ]; we came in one way and went out the other” (Sofía, 39 years, Col. Plan Chiapas, Chiapa de Corzo, 2014, 3^rd stage of MES).

In sum, during the first period there was institutional interest in allotting resources for training in gender issues; in the second, the themes were directed mostly towards domestic violence; and in the last, interest was lost on this issue, even for the beneficiaries, as the last testimony shows.

Personal dimension

Performing activities outside the household as part of the credit assigned by MES is an element that contributes to strengthening the empowerment in this dimension. In some cases the credit allowed some beneficiaries to end the isolation that they were in, developing new knowledge and thus increasing their abilities to express ideas or dominate other spaces; being part of a group and participating in activities related to it are elements that have helped to foster characteristics of empowerment in the women:

“With the credit that they gave us I did well, I became very involved, I liked having my job and being busy. I was the one in charge of making the payments for my group every month and I had to leave here, grab my transport to go to Tuxtla, and from there I would go to the tax office to make my payment” (Meche, 64 years, Berriozábal, 2014, 1st stage of MES).

“I went out a lot when I had my group. I remember once that we celebrated Woman’s day and they took me all the way to Tuxtla; there, at the fair’s palapa I went to listen to Margarita, la Diosa de la Cumbia. [ ] We would go to Tuxtla, they would take us to wherever there were events, they gave us food, we would listen to the talks that they offered, and sometimes we even sang and danced, like the day when Margarita arrived [ ]. When I returned to my house I was so happy, all laughs and laughs, even dancing with my broom when I remembered that time” (Ada, 43 years, Julián Grajales, Chiapa de Corzo, 2014, 2nd stage of MES).

“At the beginning I didn’t even know that I could talk in front of everyone, but then I realized that I could and I liked it; I felt like another person and I would even feel that my voice came out stronger… I liked going to the workshops that Banmujer gave us; because of everything that was said there, I went into it with a lot of fears, quite insecure, and I left there feeling like another person because I began to have confidence in myself” (Alba, 38 years, Berriozábal, 2014, 1st stage of MES).

These testimonies express the possibility of negotiating the outings explicitly or not with the spouse, giving themselves permission to leave their routines of domestic work briefly, enjoying it and laughing, establishing interactions with other women and with institutions. All this enriches their experience, contributes to their personal growth and, although these are questions that could turn out to be very basic, in their context they stand out because they are not part of their daily learning. The last testimony exemplifies the empowerment in the sense described by ^{García and Zapata (2012)}, since for Alba to listen to her own voice when addressing others entails a personal process that allows her to feel an inner strength to speak in public, which doubtless contributes to the development of her self-esteem and self-confidence, another aspect that contributes to increasing confidence and recognition because being subjects of credit makes them feel responsible. According to the women, the issues that obstructed this type of empowerment are machismo of the spouse or father, lack of time control, care and obligations towards children, health problems, and poverty and masculine control of income which, compared to what was reported by ^{Hidalgo (2002)}, was not difficult to detect because they expressed it freely and without any problem:

“The formation that they instilled in us at home was very traditional; men don’t go into the kitchen and my father needs to be served everything. [ ] When I talk with my family about wanting to study a career, my father starts to tell me: why would you want to study, you don’t need to, your place is at home; you don’t need anything else and a long sermon. [ ] I believe that it was a miracle how our enterprise was born; to begin with, my mom and all of us had to face many obstacles, starting with my father who, in addition to being a pessimist, gave us an education, as they say, that is very machista” (Alba, 38 years, Berriozábal, 2014, 3^rd stage of MES).

Becoming aware of their situation and the relationships of oppression that they grew up with, and have undergone, was possible thanks to the knowledge of their rights which, in many cases, was made possible by the gender training offered by MES. As can be seen in the testimonies, some women were allowed to assume a new attitude to face life; the recount by Alba, for example, shows growing awareness from recognizing the obstacles, questioning them, and mustering an inner strength to face them and have clarity about her aspirations. It also illustrates how machismo can be an important inhibitor that devalues their capacity to gain access, use and control resources.

Close relations dimension

In the words of the women beneficiaries there are no great changes in the relationships with their spouse, or in the power dynamics in their households, due fundamentally to the fact that there is still machismo present, and to the dependency of the woman and the control of income by the man, as we will see in the next testimonies:

“I kill myself working, but it’s as if nothing happens because he still drinks a lot. I came from the ranch to Chanona so he would stop drinking, but here it got worse; he no longer helps, not even with my children’s expenses” (Melina, 44 years, Dr. Domingo Chanona, Villaflores, 2014, 2nd stage of MES).

“No, I don’t have money of my own, that you can really say is mine; what I received from the credit, well, I gave it all to my son’s father and he said he used it for his business, but I don’t know. He is the one who buys the food; sometimes he takes me on Sunday to buy things for the house, the child’s milk, and everything we are going to need, but he pays for it and never gives me anything [ ], sometimes I feel like buying myself something, but I don’t have a way to do it, sometimes my mom gives me some money, but very seldom” (Alma, 25 years, Evolución neighborhoods, Tuxtla, 3rd stage of MES).

The first testimony shows a tacit acceptance and certain resignation to machismo and alcoholism; in the second one, letting the husband take care of everything the family needs expresses the recognition of a superior masculine power. In contrast, we find other cases that show us that there are women who receive help and have processes and advances in the ability to dialogue with their couple and reach agreements:

“Now that my daughters are older, my husband has let me work; he has realized that I took care of the girls and that I have to do something. When they were young I told him I wanted to learn beauty, I convinced him and studied during the afternoons; he would stay with the girls while I went to classes, it was some days in the afternoon only, two hours, not a lot, but he would stay with them. Some time ago I opened my stationary shop and he helped me with money” (Juana, 35 years, Berriozábal, 2014, 2nd stage of MES).

“Only my husband would go to Tuxtla; before I used to ask for permission for everything, and he always said yes, but there was no way I could go by myself to Chiapa, and I couldn’t even leave the house without him [ ], but with so much talk by the professionals I realized that I also have the right to go come and go, to share with my group of semilleras (we still call ourselves like this because we have been together since “la semillita”) and I stopped asking him for permission” (Ada, 43 years, Julián Grajales, Chiapa de Corzo, 2014, 2nd stage of MES).

Alma’s testimony, a young woman and dependent on her husband, shows that she occasionally receives financial support from her mother, while in the case of Juana this support is not only financial, but also in child rearing. Although she developed a capacity to negotiate with her spouse, in her narrative certain guilt is perceived for separating herself from her daughters as a product of internalized oppression that she assimilated socio-culturally and which is reproduced in the same way. Guilt is one of the most common emotions that weaken feminine self-esteem and which explain the ups and downs in the process of empowerment. From this that it is not something linear, but rather a long-term struggle where the most important battle takes place inside the person when she becomes aware of the ties and limitations that she has and thus manages to perform small changes and establish other types of relationships.

Collective dimension

Around this dimension of empowerment, the women beneficiaries point to the role of self-organization, the development of leadership, the increase in the capacity of decision making, and the training for conflict resolution that they have developed from having MES financing:

“I put together my group and I even formed another one, organized them, told them what they have to do, how we were going to do it [ ], I would move 30 women; it was a big group of women! They all listened to me [ ] and they all set up their businesses” (Ada, 43 years, Julián Grajales, Chiapa de Corzo, 2014, 2nd stage of MES).

“With all the courses that I went to in Banmujer I learned to calm my family when they all argued because we had a lot of problems that broke our business; I would talk to them, center them, get them to dialogue, we would all sit at the dining room table and I would tell them to reflect upon what was happening to us without blaming anyone, we were all to blame because we were not prepared” (Alba, 38 years, Berriozábal, 2014, 1st stage of MES).

According to what was expressed by the women, the aspects that hinder this dimension of empowerment are primarily the lack of technical support, business knowledge, and group cohesion, as well as the envy and conflicts between the beneficiaries:

“We had problems inside the business and the group dissolved. The organization failed, we began to sell in many stores at the same time (Irapuato, Hermosillo, we would send our mole all the way to McAllen, Texas), but we didn’t have control over our inventories, we had provisions in the Soriana stores, but we couldn’t verify our product physically. The store managers would only pay what was in existence, even though our inventories said we had more. We were ignorant of the administrative, financial part, and we also failed at organization as a group” (Alba, 38 years, Berriozábal, 2014, 1st stage of MES)

“The group ended because conflicts began [ ] some were doing well in their business and others did not see their profits, the envy began, the ones who didn’t sell stopped paying, others didn’t want to return the money and they started leaving” (Elodia, 44 years, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, 2014, 3rd stage of MES).

To finish this section, it should be mentioned that Alba is the only beneficiary from MES who shows characteristics of empowerment in the three dimensions suggested by Rowlands, albeit with advances and setbacks in all of them.