Journal ArticleDOI
Actually how Empowering is Microcredit
TLDR
In this paper, the effect of micro-credit program participation on women's empowerment has been evaluated by applying an analytical framework that recognizes the conceptual shift in emphasis in the definition of empowerment, from notions of greater well-being of women to notions of women's choice and active agency.Abstract:
This article re-assesses the effect of microcredit programme participation on women's empowerment by applying an analytical framework that recognizes the conceptual shift in emphasis in the definition of empowerment, from notions of greater well-being of women to notions of women's choice and active agency in the attainment of greater well-being. The author finds that microcredit programme participation has only a limited direct effect in increasing women's access to choice-enhancing resources, but has a much stronger effect in increasing women's ability to exercise agency in intra-household processes. Consequently, programme participation is able to increase women's welfare and possibly to reduce male bias in welfare outcomes, particularly in poor households.read more
Citations
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Micro-credit initiatives for equitable and sustainable development : who pays?; a case study of the Grameen Bank Program in rural Bangladesh
TL;DR: In this paper, anthropological research on the micro-credit program of the Grameen Bank shows that bank workers are expected to increase disbursement of loans among their members and press for high recovery rates to earn profit necessary for economic viability of the institution.
Journal ArticleDOI
Structural Interventions: Concepts, Challenges and Opportunities for Research
TL;DR: A number of critical issues raised by structural interventions are highlighted, and the subsequent implications of these for research are highlighted.
Journal ArticleDOI
Measurement of Women’s Empowerment in Rural Bangladesh
TL;DR: A conceptual framework is presented, together with descriptive data on the indicators, that shows that a woman's exposure to television is a significant predictor of three of the five indicators and of one of two self-esteem indicators.
Journal ArticleDOI
Social efficiency in microfinance institutions
TL;DR: This paper tries to measure the efficiency of MFIs in relation to financial and social outputs using data envelopment analysis and adds two indicators of social performance: impact on women and a poverty reach index.
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Microfinance and HIV/AIDS prevention: assessing its promise and limitations.
TL;DR: The promises and limits of integrated HIV/AIDS prevention and microfinance programs are examined by examining the available evidence base and future research agendas are proposed that may help to clear current ambiguities about the potential for economic programs to contribute to HIV/ AIDS risk reduction efforts.
References
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Book
Development as Freedom
TL;DR: In this paper, Amartya Sen quotes the eighteenth century poet William Cowper on freedom: Freedom has a thousand charms to show, That slaves howe'er contented, never know.
Journal ArticleDOI
Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the Measurement of Women's Empowerment
TL;DR: In this article, the authors evaluate the measurement of women empowerment in the context of three interrelated dimensions: resources agency, achievements, and consequences, and conclude that empowerment is defined by the structural dimensions of individual choice.
Book
Who Takes the Credit?: Gender, Power, and Control Over Loan Use in Rural Credit Programmes in Bangladesh
Anne Marie Goetz,Rina Sen Gupta +1 more
TL;DR: The authors explored variations in the degree to which women borrowers control their loans directly, reporting on recent research which found a significant proportion of women's loans to be controlled by male relatives, and found that a preoccupation with credit performance, measured primarily in terms of high repayment rates, affects the incentives of fieldworkers dispensing and recovering credit, in ways which may outweigh concerns to ensure that women develop meaningful control over their investment activities.
Journal ArticleDOI
Rural credit programs and women's empowerment in Bangladesh
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used a combination of sample survey and case study data to argue that the success of Grameen Bank, is particular, in empowering women is due both to its strong, central focus on credit and its skillful use of rules and rituals to make the loan program function.
Journal ArticleDOI
Conflicts Over Credit: Re-Evaluating the Empowerment Potential of Loans to Women in Rural Bangladesh
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the reasons why recent evaluations of the empowerment potential of credit programs for rural women in Bangladesh have arrived at very conflicting conclusions and argue that the primary source of the conflict lies in the very different understandings of intra-household power relations which these studies draw on.
Related Papers (5)
Who Takes the Credit?: Gender, Power, and Control Over Loan Use in Rural Credit Programmes in Bangladesh
Anne Marie Goetz,Rina Sen Gupta +1 more