Not All Inequality Is Equal: Deconstructing the Societal Logic of Patriarchy to Understand Microfinance Lending to Women
研究父权制作为社会逻辑如何通过家庭、宗教、职业和国家等多个渠道影响小额信贷组织对女性的贷款覆盖，发现某些国家中父权制在不同领域的差异反而促进了女性贷款。
Many social problems reflect sets of beliefs and practices—or “institutional logics”—that operate at the societal level and rationalize the marginalization of certain categories of people. Studies have examined the consequences this has for individuals, but have largely overlooked how organizations that address such issues are affected. To understand this, we apply and extend the institutional logics perspective. Our approach recognizes that practices within different sectors of a society may be shaped by different organizing principles. However, we suggest practices are also likely to reflect—to varying degrees—broader societal logics. Based on this, we argue that societal logics may work through multiple influence channels and affect organizations in non-obvious ways, depending on how, where, and with what intensity they manifest in society. We test our theory by analyzing how patriarchy, as a societal-level logic, affects outreach to women by microfinance organizations in 115 nations. We find that patriarchy supports practices in the family, religion, professions, and state that suppress this outreach. Yet, in some nations, patriarchy is differently evident across sectors. The resulting contrasts draw attention to women’s issues, motivate redress efforts, and catalyze resource flows to microfinance organizations. The greatest outreach to women is in these nations.