13 PDF

Womens empowerment
and microfinance
An Asian perspective study
13 OCCASIONAL PAPERS
Knowledge for development effectiveness
Enabling poor rural people to overcome poverty

OCCASIONAL PAPERS
Knowledge for development effectiveness
Womens empowerment and microfinance

An Asian perspective study
by
Vani S. Kulkarni
Department of Sociology
Yale University
The thirteenth in a series of discussion papers

produced by the Asia and the Pacific Division, IFAD
13
Enabling poor rural people to overcome poverty
2011 by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily
represent those of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). The
designations employed and the presentation of material in this publication do not imply the
expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of IFAD concerning the legal status of any
country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers
or boundaries. The designations developed and developing countries are intended for
statistical convenience and do not necessarily express a judgement about the stage reached by
a particular country or area in the development process.
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-92-9072-280-9
Printed December 2011
Table of contents
Acknowledgements 5
Acronyms 6
Foreword 7
Abstract 8
Introduction 9
I. Key concepts: Empowerment, empowerment and microfinance,

and woman 11
Empowerment 11
Microfinance and womens empowerment 12
Woman versus women 14
II. Microfinance and womens empowerment: Evidence from the field 15

Microfinance empowers women 15
Challenges to empowerment through microfinance 17
Economic and politico-organizational challenges 18
Ideological challenges 19
Cultural challenges 19
III. Microfinance and womens empowerment: A sociocultural framework 23

Culture and organizational challenges 23
Culture and gender challenges 24
Gendered norms 25
Microfinance as a symbolic system 27
Framing processes 29
IV. Lessons for IFAD 31
References 33
3
Acknowledgements
This study owes much to the support and advice of Ganesh Thapa at all stages.
The author is grateful to Raghav Gaiha for valuable discussions and constructive
suggestions. Thanks are also due to Nidhi Kaicker for her valuable help in finalizing the
draft. The author is grateful to the Department of Sociology at Yale University, where
the study was completed. Finally, thanks to Valentina Camaleonte for her most
meticulous administrative help. The views and interpretations expressed herein are
those of the author and should not be attributed to IFAD.
5
Acronyms
ARDCI Agricultural and Rural Development for Catanduanes, Inc.

(Philippines)
BRAC Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee
CIDA Canadian International Development Agency
CSD Centre for Self-help Development (Nepal)
DFID Department for International Development (United Kingdom)
MFI microfinance institution
NGO non-governmental organization
SEDP Small Enterprise Development Project (Bangladesh)
SEWA Self Employed Womens Association (India)
SHG self-help group
TSPI Tulay sa Pag-unlad, Inc. (Philippines)
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNIFEM United Nations Development Fund for Women
WEP Womens Empowerment Program
WWF Working Womens Forum (India)
6
Foreword
There is a general consensus that access to financial services is important if poor people
are to raise productivity, create assets, generate income and achieve food security.
Microfinance involves small-scale credit, savings and insurance to meet the needs of
poor producers. Microfinance programmes also provide skill-based training to enhance
productivity and organizational support and consciousness-building to empower poor
people. It has become an important approach for poverty reduction in many parts of
the world, including the Asia and the Pacific region. About 20 per cent of IFADs overall
portfolio of loans and grants is focused on rural financial services.
Several studies show that access to microfinance contributes to poverty reduction,
particularly for women participants, and to overall poverty reduction at the village
level. It also contributes to womens empowerment, including higher levels of mobility,
political participation and decision-making.
It is generally agreed that microfinance institutions (MFIs) have the potential to
empower women in rural areas through microcredit and related financial services.
However, they also face a number of challenges in meeting this objective. This study
argues for a more-sophisticated and nuanced analysis of culture for a deeper
understanding of the relationship between MFIs and womens empowerment.
Based on a survey of various studies and analytical review, the study identifies key
areas that can help IFAD and other development partners enhance the effectiveness of
microfinance as an anti-poverty intervention. We hope that the findings of this study
will be useful to policymakers, development practitioners, academics and civil society.
Ganesh Thapa
Regional Economist
Asia and the Pacific Division
7
Abstract
While there is a shared understanding and general consensus on the functions of

microfinance institutions (MFIs), their potential for the empowerment of women has
been much debated. This paper focuses on the nature of this debate. Studies have
indicated both the promise of MFIs and the challenges they present for womens
empowerment. In this context, various factors economic, organizational, political
and cultural have been emphasized. The present study, while acknowledging all these
factors, makes a case for a more-sophisticated and nuanced analysis of culture for a
deeper understanding of the linkages between MFIs and womens empowerment, and
suggests areas of enquiry for informed policymaking.
8
Introduction
Mr Subramanyam, political leader, Andhra Pradesh:

We feel that the time is right for regulation . As long as it was a social venture we didnt
need to put regulation, but when people and their interests are given a go-by we are looking
at a different scenario . I have seen them sell their wedding jewelry to pay the
installments, why should they do that? No one here has prospered with these loans.
(Chang and Bellman 2010)
Sunand Mitra, President for Agricultural and Rural Banking, Axis Bank:
Today, we are extremely worried about our exposure to the microfinance sector. He said
that banks are giving unconditional support to microfinance institutions, but the banks,
as lenders to microfinance institutions, have to call the shots and have to rate MFIs on a
new paradigm. (Beckett 2010)
Y.V. Shiv Narain, Vice-President, Spandana Sphoorty Financial Ltd, a microfinance

institution:
The microfinance ordinance will shut down the microfinance program, across the state and
country, which took 20 years of hard work to reach out to the poor of the nation.
(Chang and Bellman 2010)
In recent weeks, the microfinance industry in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh has
fallen into turmoil. Reporting of the views of various stakeholders politicians,
bureaucrats, banks and microlenders and the awarding of a new grant from the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation for the Microfinance Research Initiative have brought
microfinancing and microcredit, which had captured the attention of academicians
and policymakers some 25 years ago, to the centre of public discourse once again.
Among the policies related to poverty alleviation, microfinance and microcredit
programmes occupy a central position. Rural microfinancing is defined as all financial
services that are accessible to poor and low-income rural households and individuals
(IFAD 2009). Microfinance is advocated and promoted by policymakers, development
agencies, government officials and politicians as an effective anti-poverty intervention,
both through the functions it performs and for the potential it carries to improve the
livelihoods of poor and vulnerable people. And herein lies the uniqueness of
microfinance institutions (MFIs) compared with other financial institutions.
The first distinctive characteristic of MFIs can be described demographically:
women are the dominant clientele. The other uniqueness may be referred to as
institutional: It is true that MFIs are financial service agencies like other banking or
financial services, and so the empowerment or disempowerment outcomes of MFIs
may be similar to any other such service. However, what makes MFIs distinct is that
they are advocated both as financial institutions that perform the function of lending
money and as institutions that carry the potential to empower borrowers. The goal of
empowerment goes beyond financial empowerment to include social, cultural and
9
political spheres within which borrowers lives are embedded. Hence, MFIs connect
the financial, monetary world with the non-monetary world much more intrinsically
than other institutions.
Said another way, the core function of a microfinance programme is to provide
financial services, to reach poor women and men and to give them access to savings
and credit. The potential of microcredit goes beyond the provision of financial services.
These programmes have an immense potential to empower poor men and women.
The empowerment potential of microfinancing has been articulated very forcefully
in recent years, primarily because the key actors are women. Driven by the motivation
to involve women in the development process in order to achieve sustainable growth
and development recognizing that women are the poorest of the worlds poor
population and that they spend their earnings more on family welfare has led
governments, development practitioners and donor agencies to focus on microfinance
as a strategy capable of reaching and empowering women.
The theme of the 2000 Microcredit Summit Campaign spelled this out very clearly:
The success of microcredit is best summarized by Noeleen Heyzer, Executive Director of the
United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM): Microcredit is about much
more than access to money. It is about women gaining control over the means to make a
living. It is about women lifting themselves out of poverty and vulnerability. It is about
women achieving economic and political empowerment within their homes, their villages,
their countries. Microcredit Summit Campaign 2000, Looking ahead
While there is a shared understanding and general consensus on the functions of

microfinance, its potential to empower women has been much debated. The focus of
this paper is on the nature of this debate.
The paper is organized as follows: Section I discusses the concepts of women,
agency and empowerment. Section II discusses the literature that has examined the
linkages between microfinance and womens empowerment in the context of Asia.
The focus here is on reviewing the evidence of empowerment gained through access
to microfinance services, and the data that pose a doubt about such a linkage
between credit access and womens empowerment. Section III analyses a few
missing links by emphasizing a more-sophisticated and nuanced analysis of culture
for a deeper understanding of the linkages, and suggests areas of enquiry for
informed policymaking.
10
I. Key concepts: Empowerment,
empowerment and microfinance,
and woman
There are few concepts that have received great attention in both academic and policy
circles, and the concept of empowerment makes it to that list. In this section, I first
briefly review the concept of empowerment, followed by a discussion of womens
empowerment and, finally, I discuss this concept as it has been applied in the context
of microfinance and microcredit programmes.
Empowerment
For Sen (1993), empowerment is reflected in a persons capability set. The capability
of a person depends on a variety of factors, including personal characteristics and social
arrangements. Empowerment is the capacity to fulfil this capability and not just the
choice to do so. Sens view on womens empowerment is indicated in his discussion on
measurement of empowerment (Sen 1990). According to him, the focus should be on
certain universally valued functionings, which relate to the basic fundamentals of
survival and well-being regardless of context. These include proper nourishment, good
health and shelter. If there are systematic gender differences in these very basic
functioning achievements, they can be taken as evidence of inequalities in the
underlying capabilities, rather than as differences in preferences.
Empowerment is also related to the process of internal change (Mayoux 1998) and
to the capacity and right to make decisions (Kabeer 2001). It consists of change, choice
and power. It is a process of change by which individuals or groups with little or no
power gain the ability to make choices that affect their lives. The structures of power
(i.e. who has it, what its sources are, and how it is exercised) directly affect the choices
that women are able to make in their lives (Mayoux 2001, 18). In the feminist
paradigm, empowerment goes beyond economic betterment and well-being to strategic
gender interests (Bali-Swain 2006). Empowerment can exist at an individual level,
where it is about having an agency, increased autonomy, choice, self-confidence and
self-esteem. It can also exist at a collective level that would include collective
mobilization of women, and when possible men, for the purpose of questioning and
changing the subordination connected with gender. Personal and collective
empowerment are intrinsically linked because without the latter, the former becomes
circumscribed (Sen 1990).
Another view of womens empowerment argues that it needs to occur in multiple
dimensions: economic, sociocultural, familial/interpersonal, legal, political and
psychological (Malhotra, Schuler and Boender 2002). These dimensions cover a broad
range of factors, and thus women may be empowered within one of these subdomains.
For instance, the sociocultural dimension covers a range of empowerment subdomains,
such as marriage systems, norms regarding womens physical mobility, non-familial
social support systems and networks available to women.
Social capital, social networks, the capacity to make effective life and community
development choices are all related to empowerment (Krishna 2003; Grootaert 2003).
11
According to Kabeer (1999), empowerment is about the ability to make strategic life
choices, and constitutes three dimensions: resources (defined broadly to include not only
access, but also future claims to material, human and social resources); agency (including
processes of decision-making and less-measurable manifestations of agency such as
negotiation, deception and manipulation); and achievements (well-being outcomes).
On its PovertyNet, the World Bank defines empowerment as the process of
increasing the capacity of individuals or groups to make choices, and to transform those
choices into desired actions and outcomes. Central to this process are actions that build
both individual and collective assets, and improve the efficiency and fairness of the
organizational and institutional context which govern the use of these assets.1 In the
policy circle, it identifies four key elements of empowerment for drafting institutional
reforms: access to information; inclusion and participation; accountability; and local
organizational capacity (World Bank 2001).
According to UNIFEM (2000), womens empowerment consists of gaining the ability
to generate choices and exercise bargaining power developing a sense of self-worth, a
belief in ones ability to secure desired changes, and the right to control ones life.
One major point of debate with regard to empowerment is its measurement.
Measurement becomes important because of its policy significance. According to
Malhotra, Schuler and Boender (2002), although empowerment has been identified as
a primary development goal, neither the World Bank nor any other major development
agency has developed a rigorous method for measuring and tracking changes in levels
of empowerment.
Some of the key methods that research has used to measure empowerment include
the Gender Development Index (GDI) and Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM),
quantitative surveys, ethnographic investigations, focus group discussions and case
studies. Control is commonly used as a measure of empowerment. Scholars have also
suggested resources, agency and achievements, and not just access, as ways to measure
empowerment (Kabeer 1999). It is also agreed that certain key measures of
empowerment such as decision-making, self-confidence and self-esteem are very
difficult to measure (Cheston and Kuhn 2002).
Microfinance and womens empowerment

The focus on womens empowerment in the context of microfinance brings to light the
significance of gender relations in policy development circles more prominently than
ever before. Women are vaunted as a weapon against poverty (DFID 2006, 1).
The rationale for providing women access to microfinance services is that gender
inequalities inhibit economic growth and development (World Bank, CIDA, UNDP,
UNIFEM). Hence, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) provides
increased access to productive assets (especially land, capital, and credit), processing,
and marketing for women (CIDA 1999).
Critics of the development perspective argue that the policy development approach
to empowerment is extremely instrumental. As Cornwall and Edward (2010) put it,
womens empowerment is heralded as a means that can produce extraordinary ends
their empowerment extolled as the solution to a host of entrenched social and
1 web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/EXTEMPOWERMENT/0,,contentMDK:
20245753~menuPK:543261~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:486411~isCURL:Y,00.html.
12
economic problems. The predominant image of empowerment in development is that
of women gaining (material) means to empower themselves as individuals, and
putting this to the service of their families and communities. This is primarily because
empowerment is understood in relation to deliberate and planned interventions such
as electoral quotas, education, economic empowerment initiatives, legislative change
and non-governmental public action.
The alternative perspective emphasizes that womens empowerment emerges: (i) as a
result of cultural, economic and other changes, such as the availability of new
technologies in their lives (e.g. mobile phones and satellite television); (ii) as womens
current opportunities and constraints; and (iii) as a process in time, across generations
(Cornwall and Edwards 2010). Since the context of womens lives matters and the same
interventions are not effective everywhere, most of the policies remain ineffective
(Abdullah, Aisha and King 2010; Sardenberg 2010a). The experiences of empowerment
and disempowerment are related not just to material means and interventions, but also
to social relationships (Kabeer and Haq 2010; Sardenberg 2010a), narratives
(Priyadarshani and Rahim 2010), voice (Goetz and Nyamu Musembi 2008), choice
(Kabeer 2008) and negotiations (Huq 2010; Johnson 2010).
This critique is well reflected in the three paradigms of womens empowerment
through microfinance: (i) feminist empowerment paradigm; (ii) financial self-
sustainability paradigm; and (iii) poverty alleviation paradigm (Mayoux 2005, 2006).
It is not that MFIs do not pay attention to womens empowerment issues; however,
they do so marginally by adhering to the latter two paradigms. As Mayoux (2005, 2006)
eloquently explains, in the financial self-sustainability paradigm, womens
empowerment strategies are seen as entailing unacceptable costs, as the paradigms
explicit aim is to develop fully financially self-sufficient MFIs. In the poverty alleviation
paradigm, womens empowerment is seen as an external imposition by a Western-
influenced middle-class feminist elite, with little relevance to the needs of poor
women. It is also seen as politically sensitive and involving conflicts within households
and communities that may undermine organizational sustainability. Both paradigms
perceive conflicts between womens empowerment and development aims.
Thus the feminist paradigm where the central concern lies in promoting gender
equality and human rights has been emphasized as an effective route to womens
empowerment through microfinance institutions.
Although microfinance programmes adhere to the latter two paradigms, there are
arguments on why MFIs should adopt empowerment approaches:
Firstly, microfinance practices do not always produce automatic empowerment benefits for
women; therefore, empowerment must be strategically planned for in MFIs. Secondly,
empowerment approaches allow microfinance institutions to realize their full potential in
contributing to a number of critical dimensions of womens empowerment. Finally,
empowerment approaches are often compatible with other approaches to microfinance
(e.g. financial sustainability), and can actually enhance the aims of these other
approaches in many cases. Mayoux (2006)
An agenda of targeting women for loan access, and detaching the empowerment aspect,
will thus be an anti-poverty strategy that is not only rationally unmusical, but also
morally incomprehensible. For this reason, the agenda for MFIs should be to develop
useful linkages between the functions of MFIs and their empowering potential.
13
Woman versus women

All efforts at improving an MFIs impact on women boil down to really understanding
a womans needs, her predicament and what she dreams of. Even before all the
questions can be answered, the basic question that must first be answered is who she
is (Noni S. Ayo, Managing Director of Agricultural and Rural Development for
Catanduanes, Inc. (ARDCI), in the Philippines).2
This quote sums up a major concern and challenge that emerges in the context of
microfinance and womens empowerment. In exploring such empowerment, it is
important to have a clear understanding not only of the concept of empowerment but
also of the category of woman.
In an effort to empower women through microfinance, caution needs to be
exercised that an excessive focus on women may come at the cost of empowerment of
a woman. Although womens personal empowerment may not be effective without
collective empowerment, but treating women as a homogeneous category may be an
equally nave approach. Listening to clients and carefully evaluating their resource
bases, strengths and vulnerabilities is important if microfinance programmes are to
realize the goal of womens empowerment (Cheston and Kuhn 2002).
Finally, this gender analysis of microfinance includes an understanding of the
empowerment impact of MFIs: (i) on women as an exclusive category; and
(ii) on women in relation to men. In other words, it addresses the question of how
much is the effect of MFIs on women due to the fact that they are women.
2 Quoted in Cheston and Kuhn (2002): ARDCI, Empowering Women Through Microfinance: ARDCIs Experience
by Noni Ayo (Catanduanes, Philippines, 2001), p. 2.
14
II. Microfinance and womens empowerment:
Evidence from the field
Microfinance empowers women

The question of whether microfinance empowers women has attracted attention in
both academic and policy circles. The answers range from microfinance having the
potential to empower women fully to microfinance alone cannot empower women
to how the programme can actually disempower women.
The logic of microfinances potential for empowerment is similar to the economic
model of empowerment: microfinance makes women economically independent by
putting capital and financial resources in their hands. Economic independence results
in higher bargaining power for women in their households and communities, and
subsequently results in higher prestige and self-esteem. Here the functions of
microfinance are synchronous with its potential to empower.
Microfinance has been seen as contributing not only to poverty reduction and
financial sustainability, but also to a series of virtuous spirals of economic
empowerment, increased well-being and social and political empowerment for women
themselves, thereby addressing goals of gender equality and empowerment (Mayoux
and Hartl 2009, 8).
Empowerment through microfinance is identified and measured in various
dimensions: impact on decision-making, on self-confidence of women, on their status
at home, on family relationships and the incidence of domestic violence, on their
involvement in the community, on their political empowerment and rights (Cheston
and Kuhn 2002).
Although it is difficult to measure the exact impact of access to microcredit on
different dimensions such as impact on decision-making and on self-confidence
studies have shown that MFIs indeed have a positive effect on each of these different
dimensions of womens empowerment.
For instance, an MFI institution in the Philippines (Tulay sa Pag-unlad, Inc. [TSPI])
reported a dramatic increase, from 33 to 51 per cent, in womens role as funds
managers in their households, with only 5 per cent relinquishing control of household
funds management during that period (Ledesma 2002). Similarly, in Nepal, Shrestha
(1998, 28) found that women participating in the MFI programme were able to make
small purchases of necessary items such as groceries independently.
This echoed the findings of Ashe and Parrott (2002, 152). They found that in
listing the ways how Pacts Womens Empowerment Program (WEP) had changed
their lives, the three most frequently mentioned categories had to do with:
empowerment and education, increased self-confidence and a greater role in
decision-making, followed by literacy and the knowledge of womens rights. Savings
and lending did not make it to this list. The findings of WEP in Nepal reported that
about 68 per cent of women experienced an increase in their decision-making power
in areas that were traditionally dominated by men, such as family planning, a
daughters marriage, childrens schooling, and the buying and selling of property. The
Nirdhan Utthan Bank in Nepal found that most of their women clients were making
15
decisions about business investments jointly with their husbands, rather than their
husbands making such decisions alone (PLAN 2001). In the context of Bangladesh,
Kabeer (1998) argued that just bringing financial resources to the households gave
women an agency and a sense of the power they have within themselves.
According to the field studies conducted under the IFAD gender mainstreaming
review, the empowerment of women regarding the dimensions of their ability to
make decisions and their experience of self-confidence and self-esteem indicated that
women were able to decide on spending their own income although men were often
consulted, articulate their views and command attention and respect within the
household, and often within the community. Increased self-confidence was especially
pronounced when women had been exposed to training on womens rights and social
and political issues (Kay 2003, 71).
Other studies indicate that the self-help groups (SHGs) mediated by microcredit
have helped women gain control over assets and subsequently acquire self-esteem,
knowledge and power (Zaman 2001; Simanowitz and Walker 2002).
In addition to the impact on womens decision-making power and agency, MFI
access is also reported to have positively affected womens relationships within the
household, particularly the experience of domestic violence. This is an important
finding given the nature of patriarchal culture in most of the households in Asia. For
instance, in her study of the Small Enterprise Development Project (SEDP) in
Bangladesh, Kabeer (1998, 44) notes that womens contribution to the household
helped bring about a reduction in abuse and strengthening of their relative position
within an interdependent relationship with their husbands.
A view of one client of SEDP quoted by Kabeer states:
He gives me more value since the loan. I know, because now he hands all his earnings to
me. If I had not gone to the meeting, not taken a loan, not learnt the work, I would not
get the value I have, I would have to continue to ask my husband for every taka I needed
. Before, my husband used to beat me when I asked him for money, now, even if he
doesnt earn enough every day, I can work, we dont have to suffer.
Other studies in Bangladesh support Kabeers finding and emphasize that access and
economic contribution to the household indeed reduced abuse within the household
(Hashemi, Schuler and Riley 2001; Schuler et al. 2001). It also meant scope to escape
from an abusive relationship, and greater capacity to resist wife-beating and
alcoholism. In Nepal, the Working Womens Forum (WWF) found that 40.9 per cent
of its members that had experienced domestic violence stopped it because of their
personal empowerment, while 28.7 per cent were able to stop it through group action.
The Centre for Self-help Development (CSD) in Nepal also noticed a greater resistance
to wife-beating and alcoholism among its clients (Cheston and Kuhn 2002).
In addition to providing respect within the household domain, microfinance
institutions have empowered women in spaces other than the private domain,
particularly in their communities. In Nepal, a significant number of women in CSD
communities are perceived with respect and accepted without purdah in public spaces
(Shrestha 1998, 28). Similarly, in Bangladesh, women showed a good deal of
empowerment in their capacity to articulate their needs and in their receptivity to new
ideas (Kay 2003). More impressive was the emergence of womens groups as a dynamic,
articulate constituency (Krishnaraj and Kay 2002).
16
Empowerment in public spaces is also determined by womens ability to form
social networks and social capital and their ability to sanction, influence and change
social norms. According to Krishna (2003), empowerment means increasing the
capacity of individuals or groups to make effective development and life choices and to
transform these choices into desired actions and outcomes. The nature of
empowerment here is of women not only at an individual level, but collectively as well.
The linkage between this aspect of empowerment and microfinance was explored by
Sanyal (2009) in her study of 59 microfinance groups in West Bengal. She found that
economic ties produced through access to microcredit led to improvements in womens
social capital and their ability to influence social norms. This fostered womens
capacity to undertake collective action and facilitated their collective empowerment.
In addition, research indicates that social networks enable mutual assistance that
generates trust and solidarity, which in turn lower costs to MFIs and contribute to
their likely sustainability and to continued empowerment benefits, because they
essentially reduce risk and thereby lower some elements of the cost of providing
services to poor people.
A case study in Narathiwat, a predominantly Muslim province in southern Thailand,
illustrates womens empowerment both within the household and at the community
level (Kay 2003, 76). Here, SHGs were formed to manufacture products such as batik
and embroidered articles. The author notes that the project has fostered participation of
all members, including women. This has led to enhancement of womens status in the
household and also at the community level. Some members of the womens groups are
reportedly engaged in local community management structures and issues.
Finally, major evidence of womens empowerment through microfinance was found in
its impact on womens political empowerment and rights. In the Philippines, for instance,
Cheston and Kuhn (2002, 24) note that women clients of Opportunity Microfinance Bank
have gained leadership experience and confidence as leaders of their Trust Banks, and have
gone on to be elected as leaders within their barangays a community-level political unit.
In Bangladesh, Hashemi, Schuler and Riley (1996) found that microfinance programmes
of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) promoted social and political
awareness and participation in political campaigns and protests. In Nepal, Shrestha (1998,
28) found that the CSD programme resulted in womens political participation:
96 women were elected to village and district development committees. In India, there is
evidence of microfinance programmes leading to womens political empowerment
through political mobilization. WWF has a money-lending branch, and it has also
successfully trained and mobilized women to take civic action to support womens rights
and against social problems (Cheston and Kuhn 2002). Similarly, Sanyals study (2009)
recorded that women in self-help microcredit groups in West Bengal mobilized in
response to issues related to domestic violence, mens extra-marital affairs, acquiring
public goods and anti-gambling and anti-alcoholism campaigns.
Challenges to empowerment through microfinance

While the empowering potential of microfinance programmes remains strong, the
evidence of challenges, ineffectiveness and limitations of the potential is equally
compelling. Although microfinance has the ability to empower women, the connection
is not straightforward or easy to make. Significant research and much anecdotal evidence
suggests that this link is certainly not automatic (Hunt and Kasynathan 2001, 2002;
17
Kabeer 1998; Mayoux 1998). Just handing money to women and giving them access to
financial assets and resources creates a new set of challenges for women, thus balancing
the experience of empowerment with the experience of extra burdens. Others argue more
strongly that access to microcredit actually impacts womens empowerment experience
negatively by leading to a certain kind of disempowerment. Yet another set of analyses
indicates that the goals of microfinance and its empowering potential are intrinsically of
conflicting natures. The argument is that focusing on womens empowerment leads to
dilution of efficiency and sustainability of MFIs, and this results in reluctance to focus on
womens empowerment when designing their systems and programmes.
Impressive literature exists that records the challenges and gaps between the goals
and the empowerment potential of microfinance programmes that target women. These
challenges emanate in the economic, politico-organizational, ideological and cultural
domains within which microfinance institutions and microcredit lending programmes
are embedded. This section discusses the multidimensionality of these challenges.
Economic and politico-organizational challenges

The central issue here is whether the economic goals of efficiency and sustainability of
MFIs are rationally compatible with the goals of empowerment. There are arguments
pro and con.
Those who support a finding of compatibility have argued that targeting women is
in fact more judicious, because: (i) womens repayment rates are higher than mens;
(ii) women are more cooperative; and (iii) awareness of what clients have and what
they need and empowering them can actually increase sustainability, because MFIs
can offer loans that are appropriate and sustainable (Cheston and Kuhn 2002).
Those who emphasize that it is incompatible to aim for efficiency while pursuing
the empowerment of women argue that institutions that place a priority on serving
women also have a tendency to place social goals ahead of efficiency, leading to poorer
financial performance (Cheston and Kuhn 2002).
In the views and experience of Damian von Stauffenberg, founder and chairman of
MicroRate, the first rating agency to specialize in microfinance, MFIs which
concentrate exclusively on women may place ideological goals ahead of technical
competence. Whether this is true remains to be proven.3 A related argument is that:
MFIs fear that building empowering elements into their programmes will threaten their
financial sustainability ratios and limit their access to funds from major bilateral and
multilateral donor agencies. Many donor agencies funding criteria focus primarily on
outreach and institutional sustainability criteria and do not reward programmes that are
able to demonstrate greater and more sustainable impact on their clients. The incentive
structures lead many MFIs to consider including programme elements intentionally
empowering for women as extras or luxuries rather than as an integral part of their
programme design and goals. Cheston and Kuhn 2002
While there are certain studies showing that better lives can be built by integrating
microfinance programmes with programmes such as education and health (Dunford
2001, 2) certain microcredit programmes such as WWF in India and Womens World
Banking in the Dominican Republic do combine empowerment goals with goals of
3 Quoted in Cheston and Kuhn (2002).
18
financial sustainability the economic and organizational concerns of MFIs place great
constraints on realizing the empowerment potential of microfinancing.
The most pertinent example of the consequence of such an economic constraint is
the recent turmoil regarding microcredit programmes in the region of Andhra Pradesh
in southern India. The economic rationale and logic of MFIs charging high rates of
interest, and the reduction or non-existence of interest in integrating other welfare
programmes to empower women in their programme design and goals, are quoted as
the primary reasons for the crash of MFIs.
A recent analysis of the crisis in Andhra Pradesh shows that relying on a
credit-based poverty reduction strategy is not as judicious, because there are other
institutional and structural solutions. This is because what microfinance boasted of
trust and solidarity, a cheaper option for poor people and that microcredit has only
benign demerits has lost its vitality (Nair 2011). As the key actors are women, the
insufficient benefits of this programme have been experienced by women. In a rather
moving narration of womens experience with MFIs in Rajasthan in northwest India,
Nair (2011, 25) describes: in a remote north Rajasthan village that has a couple of
failed SHGs, as the women could not sustain their involvement in groups, I found poor
women with large loans from a south MFI, whose name or address they had no clue
of. They look up to them with the same eyes as they do to a local moneylender.
Ideological challenges
A key debate here is whether the concept of empowerment and womens
empowerment is an integral part of a given society or is an imported phenomenon that
is borrowed and imposed from the West on the East? Since the primary interest of MFIs
is financial sustainability, introducing empowerment issues is not only incompatible
with their goals; it is also an additional agenda in which MFIs would avoid investing.
Although governments and organizations such as the Self Employed Womens
Association (SEWA) and WWF in India have mobilized women for a long time to fight
for womens rights, it does make it easier for MFIs to avoid an empowerment agenda
as it sometimes mutually suits the MFIs and other stakeholders such as national
governments. Indeed, there are reports that the MFI turmoil in Andhra Pradesh is more
due to government politicians and officials vested interests and lack of concern for
womens empowerment (Bellman 2010).
Cultural challenges
The biggest cultural constraint on womens empowerment through microfinance
programmes doing research is the culture of patriarchy pervasive throughout Asia. The
patriarchal culture is dynamic and thus exercises constraints in different contexts, in
varied forms and at various stages in the empowerment process.
These include: bargaining power and the ability to make decisions on economic issues
within the household, ability to make decisions outside the household, control over
loans, building of social networks, responsibility for household chores, and power over
ones time and physical and emotional health and energy. Drawing on evidence from
the extant literature, the discussion below will analyse the nature of cultural challenges
to, and constraints on, the empowering potential of microfinance programmes.
The key question here is whether womens access to credit automatically translates
into empowerment in terms of impact on decision-making and self-confidence.
19
As Kabeer (1999, 20) notes, many feminists recognize that poor men are almost as
powerless as poor women in access to material resources in the public domain, but
remain privileged within the patriarchal structure of the family.
Thus, although studies show that womens access to microcredit empowers them in
various ways, the same studies and many others also reveal that in the context of
womens empowerment, it is safe to say that loan alone moans.
Research conducted on perspectives of women loan borrowers in Bangladesh has
emphasized the negative aspect. Findings show that although the benefits of loans
accrued to men and other household members, the responsibility and accountability
for repaying the loans lay with the woman client, which caused increased levels of stress
and dependency (Kabeer 1998; Goetz and Gupta 1996; Rahman 1999; Todd 1996).
It has also been argued that such loans hardly pull women and their households
out of poverty (Fisher and Sriram 2002, 27). As women bear the burden of repayment,
they often borrow from other sources to pay back loans, leading to indebtedness. When
women borrow for themselves, they lack the means to repay, because women generally
invest in existing activities that are low profit and insecure (Mayoux 2006, 10).
Similarly, in Nepal, although Shrestha (1998) states that women in CSD programmes
were gaining autonomy, the researcher also notes that there were no noticeable changes
in the nature of gender relations and their prescribed roles and responsibilities within the
household. Womens mobility increases in terms of income-generating activities, but the
social stigma of womens mobility remains. Hence, there was a realization that womens
empowerment takes much more than access options. The programme needs to consider
some strategic or structural changes and incorporate gender mainstreaming actions in
order to inch towards the overall empowerment of women.
Research by Gaiha and Nandhi (2005) on the role of SHGs in contributing to
womens empowerment reveals that empowerment was corroborated by different
sources and methods in varying degrees. These included gaining self-confidence,
greater respect within the family, a more assertive role in family decision-making, and
better buying and selling skills. Practices such as polygamy, patriarchal control over
resources and social norms of reproductive responsibilities truncate this success.
Again, in the context of microfinance programmes facilitating political empowerment
for women in Nepal, although Shrestha (1998) shows that 96 CSD women were elected
as political representatives, they were nominal representatives and did not have any
influence on the decision-making process once elected.
The use of credit loans also indicates the influence of patriarchal culture, thus
negatively influencing womens empowerment. Particularly in South Asia and parts of
Latin America, most women use loans for their husbands activities (Goetz and Gupta
1996; Basnet 1995).
Similarly, Kabeer (1998, 28) finds that microfinance has been effective in increasing
incomes and assets, although certainly not in the poorest households. Women tend to
spend income, when they do control it, on household consumption and security-related
assets such as homestead land, whereas men borrowers are more likely to invest in further
productive activities. How strong and real gender empowerment is through these loans is
indicated by the name in which any new assets are registered, and why. Kabeer found that
many women continue to register land and productive assets in their husbands name
because of inheritance laws: assets will be inherited by sons if registered in the husbands
name, and by daughters if registered in the wifes name (Kabeer 1998, 48-50).
20
The low empowerment effect of access to loans is evidenced when even where they
use loans for their own activities, womens choice of activity and the ability to increase
their incomes are seriously constrained by gender inequalities in access to other,
supplementary resources for investment; responsibility for household subsistence
expenditure; lack of time due to unpaid domestic work; low levels of mobility; and
vulnerability all of which limit womens access to profitable markets in many
cultures (Mayoux and Hartl 2009, 12).
In the context of Pakistan, Zaidi et al. (2007) note that womens empowerment across
a range of indicators of decision-making actually decreased and the reasons were unclear.
Rahmans study (1999) also showed that 40 to 70 per cent of the loans disbursed to
women were used by the spouse and that tensions within the household increased.
In a study of the relationship of economic empowerment to microfinance in
West Bengal, Basu (2006) reports that among women who had taken out loans for
income-generating activities, only 5 per cent reported having total autonomous control
over the money. Fifty-six per cent reported that they share control with their husbands,
and 38 per cent that their husbands have sole control over the proceeds of the loan.
In five states of India, another study of the impact of microfinance on the decision-
making power of women showed that although women in SHGs who had access to
microcredit were involved in decision-making in their households more than women
in the control group their empowerment did not show any significant impact on
some of the key decision-making areas of family planning, childrens marriage and the
buying and selling of land (Bali-Swain 2006). Swain and Wallentin (2009) found that
unless existing social norms and culture are challenged, microfinance through SHGs
does not empower women.
In her classic study of SEDP in Bangladesh, Kabeer (1998) showed that although
women who borrowed loans reported having a sense of self-worth, these subjective
perceptions did not translate into actual changes in well-being, gender relations at
home or any benefits. This resonates with other studies of gender relations at the
household level (Sen 1990, Kandiyoti 1998).
In addition, economic empowerment may come at the cost of psychological stress
and health. The work burden for women increases, because microcredit programmes,
although useful, increase womens work by involving them in time-consuming
meetings and income-generating activities without taking any action to reduce their
traditional responsibilities (Mayoux and Hartl 2009; Cheston and Kuhn 2002). This
resonates with Kabeers (1998, 21) thoughts on the challenging nature of womens
empowerment, when she explains that different aspects of womens disempowerment,
and hence empowerment, are closely related so that initiatives in relation to one aspect
are likely to set off changes in other aspects, although not in easily predictable ways.
There is also evidence of not only lack of impact of microfinance programmes, but
danger of disempowerment, because credit, which is actually a debt, may lead to severe
impoverishment or abandonment and may put serious strains on networks with other
women. Moreover, pressure to save may mean women forgoing their own necessary
consumption (Mayoux 2006).
The nature of economic empowerment through microfinance is also not very
appealing, because it tends to reduce empowerment gained through other sources,
especially through social capital and social networks. Research shows that if social
meetings are only about money transactions, and if women falter in repaying loans,
21
womens existing networks may come under serious strain (Rahman 1999). In a similar
vein, Ngo and Wahhaj (2011) note that in situations where microloans are given to
women who do not have the ability to engage in economic activities autonomously or
to have autonomous control of the resources, microfinance projects do not empower
women. Similarly, in impoverished communities where microfinance operates, it is
usually kinship ties and marriage systems, rather than microfinance loans, which help
claim household and community resources (Ngo and Wahhaj 2011). Such negative
impact of MFIs on social capital counters the positive effect explored in the other
studies described above. This indicates how the same phenomena here, social capital
and networks can simultaneously weaken and strengthen MFIs.
An in-depth gender analysis of the impact of MFIs on womens empowerment
ought to take into account not just how MFIs impact women borrowers, but also how
they impact them as an exclusive category in relation to men who receive
microfinance loans.
The review of positive and negative effects of MFIs on womens empowerment
raises an important issue: what is it about these effects that are women-specific. In
other words, are these outcomes only related to women as opposed to men? And does
this effect on women take place because they are women?
A powerful distinction exists between two feminist perspectives: one group argues
that women cannot be thought of as a social collective because gender cannot be
generalized (Spelman 1988; Butler 1990; Mohanty 1991) and that the .search for
common characteristics of women or womens oppression leads to normalizations and
exclusions (Young 1997). The other group argues that the denial of seeing women as
a social collective reinforces the privilege of those who benefit from keeping women
divided (Lange 1991).
This conceptual framework relates in important ways to the situation of
empowerment outcomes for women in MFIs. Thus there are certainly outcomes that are
specific to women, but this does not have to do so much with the characteristics that
are intrinsic to women. Rather it is due to the societal and cultural conditions that affect
women uniquely. So, while seeing women as a social collective possessing certain
unique characteristics such as women managing household responsibilities and
belonging to the private sphere more rigidly than men has been helpful in promoting
and providing access to MFIs, these traits are not biologically intrinsic to women.
Rather they are a product of socialization and cultural conditioning giving rise to a
patriarchal culture. This results in womens experience of empowerment through MFIs
exclusive to women.
In other words, while the positive effects of MFIs on women may equally apply to
men, it is the negative influence, discussed in the preceding sections, that is mostly
exclusively and disproportionately experienced by women. The effect of patriarchal
culture is most pervasive and pernicious, and women experience it exclusively.
Similarly, the disempowerment outcomes due to social networks pertain, if not
specifically to women because they are women, then certainly in greater proportion.
This is because women more than men rely on the value of connectedness (Collins
1990), rather than on a morality of individual rights (Robnett 1997). These are women
whose everyday lives are embedded in a collectivity and in community to a much larger
extent than are mens, who enter the public sphere for employment. For these reasons,
MFIs negative impact on womens empowerment is such because they are women.
22
III. Microfinance and womens empowerment:
A sociocultural framework
The evidence discussed above of the contributions and limitations of microfinance

programmes to womens empowerment reveals that poverty reduction interventions do
not exist in isolation. Rather, they are rooted within the larger social matrix that
influences them and that they, in turn, influence. This social matrix consists of
economic, political, ideological and cultural categories.
In the context of poverty reduction through MFIs, the functions, design and
implementation of microfinance programmes ought to be cognizant of these
categories. Given that the key actor and target of microfinance programmes is women,
and given that women are a vulnerable and disadvantaged sector of the population, it
becomes extremely important that MFIs take into account the social matrix within
which womens everyday lives are embedded. Otherwise, an external intervention of
empowerment such as that of taking microcredit loans may simply sustain women in
their existing situation (Cornwall and Edwards 2010).
The extant literature academic and policy provides very useful discussion and
suggestions on how and why MFIs should focus on their empowering potential. The
concluding section will add to the existing literature by further analysing and
suggesting a few areas of enquiry.
The evidence that empowerment through access to loans is not enough makes a
good case for paying attention to the significance of non-economic factors. Thus a
helpful conceptual framework for developing linkages between functions and the
empowerment potential of MFIs is the cultural framework. This framework addresses
the concern of placing MFIs within the larger social matrix. The framework includes
identifying the role of culture at two levels: the organization of MFIs and the different
locations family/household, social networks, non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
within which womens lives are embedded. 4 The discussion below will focus on analysing
the two levels of culture for an understanding of the empowerment/access linkage.
Culture and organizational challenges

As mentioned above, concern for the financial sustainability of MFIs is considered
incompatible with concern for womens empowerment. There is perhaps some
justification in this belief. However, as there are different routes to achieving
womens empowerment, mainstreaming gender in the following areas can actually
enhance the efficiency and sustainability of MFIs, while ensuring gender equality and
empowerment: (i) understanding and valuing womens activities, strategies,
priorities and challenges; (ii) making information available in language that is user-
friendly to women; (iii) including women in design plans through participatory
research programmes; (iv) integrating gender into core group mobilization for
savings and credit; (v) giving women access to non-financial services, such as
involving them in the application process; (vi) recognizing womens talents and
4 The organizational culture is referred to as internal or institutional culture by Matt Leonard (Leonard 2009).
23
giving them loans in amounts that would help them expand a business and increase
its quality through the purchase of superior equipment and materials; (vii) including
women in value and supply chains so as to promote markets for services used by
women; and (viii) providing smaller loans with quick returns, targeted at productive
activity, and making savings and services available in locations that women
frequently access (Mayoux and Hartl 2009, 22-23).
Others have suggested capacity-building for women to achieve greater market
control in terms of two stages: livelihood security and enterprise growth (Viswanath
2003, 236). The gender mainstreaming approach, I emphasize, constitutes the
organizational culture of MFIs.
This organizational culture can affect womens experiences of MFIs in a positive way
if it pays attention to issues such as: enhancing the capacities of women in the use of
specific technologies for which finance is required; formation of groups; and teaching
leadership roles and responsibilities of members. It also includes issues such as
training, especially for illiterate women, in simple calculation of profits, managing
savings and keeping passbooks. Providing women with marketing information
through communications channels, for instance through cell phones and social
networks; teaching repair of machinery/equipment if this is required in the business;
where to access spare parts; and access to other resources, e.g. seed, fertilizer, etc., all
comprise the organizational culture of MFIs.
It is important to note here that many microfinance programmes fail because once
an activity becomes commercialized, men take over. One of the reasons is that women
are not well trained and lack the new knowledge and skills required to build their
confidence/self-esteem to pursue a new enterprise. Or even if they have had training,
they do not have access to the other resources needed to make the enterprise profitable
(e.g. repair and spare parts shops, sources of mushroom spawn, vaccines). Thus it is not
only a matter of giving women loans, but of providing information packages, skills, etc.
with the loan. A recent study provides evidence of this: Ngo and Wahhaj (2011) show
that women who lack skills to undertake economic activities outside the household on
their own often do not feel empowered by loans. In such situations, women may
actually find themselves disempowered, because husbands take full control of the
loans and thus strengthen their own already strong bargaining power in the household.
The organizational culture of MFIs pays attention to all these issues.
Culture and gender challenges

The argument here is that gender is itself a cultural form and poses a cultural challenge.
The mechanism of patriarchy places men and women in different social locations and
endows different bargaining powers with varying levels of vulnerabilities. Although
men and women are not homogeneous categories, women universally do tend to be
placed in a disadvantaged position (in varied forms) in relation to men.
In the context of womens empowerment through MFIs, the nature of such a
gender/culture challenge is perhaps the most researched and yet the slowest to have
been addressed in policy circles. The reason may have to do with the complex nature
of cultural influence.
The major focus of the policy development approach has been to understand
whether access to microcredit leads to empowerment as defined in terms of material
means. Academic research has emphasized that access to loans alone cannot lead to
24
womens empowerment and that microfinance empowerment needs to be understood
in cultural terms. Thus, in addition to changes in organizational culture such as
training, education and creating awareness of MFIs, research has highlighted the
cultural environment, which is dominated by patriarchal values, within which
womens everyday activities and lives are embedded. Most of the research discussed
above has shown that in the areas of ability to make decisions on crucial issues, control
over loans, and experience of domestic violence, men continue to dominate. The
mechanism of patriarchal gender relations and norms provides an explanation.
What is missing, however, is a more-sophisticated and nuanced analysis of culture.
A cultural analysis includes the way in which the internal systems of meaning influence
and dictate social behaviour. The emphasis here shifts from structural factors, such as
power and material resources of institutions, to an emphasis on the symbols that shape
and limit our individual actions, thoughts and feelings.
Culture is manifested in values, norms, symbols, emotions, gender identity, frames
and interpretations. To understand how culture mediates between access and
empowerment, it is important to identify the various forms. Although these forms are
connected relationally, nevertheless, identifying the role of cultural structures the
specific systems of meaning that are used to weigh and consider our world in shaping
microfinances capacity to empower women is important for both conceptual and
policy concerns.
In the context of the relationship between microfinance and womens
empowerment, there are a few particular forms of cultural structures that are
particularly relevant, both conceptually and in terms of policy. These include: gendered
norms, symbols and framing processes. In each of these forms, the significance of
culture in understanding and explaining the relationship between microfinance and
womens empowerment is revealed.
Gendered norms
At a conceptual level, it is crucial to recognize that gendered identities, values, norms
and roles permeate all settings and all levels: family/household, state, civil society
organizations and markets. In the case of womens empowerment through MFIs, the
key institutions are households, MFIs, banks and NGOs. Womens participation in
MFIs brings notions of womens gender roles, sexuality and work into conflict
(Hoffman 2003). In the institutions households and MFIs, the women involved are
those who themselves have been subject to patriarchal values in the private domain
(household) and have had little opportunity or encouragement to pursue activities
with the potential to empower them and, paradoxically, are now recruited and selected
to enter the public domain, become aware of rules of the small economy and take
charge of running the household, economically, along with their other non-economic
roles. While this establishes their legitimacy and claims to citizenship in the public
domain, it also poses conflicts and contradictions in their lack of power as women in
the very same domain (Walkerdine 1990).
In suggesting that women in MFIs and in households experience exclusion as
women, I am not implying that the experience of gender norms and the process and
nature of exclusion and citizenship of all women are exactly the same. As noted above,
the homogeneity of women is indeed a myth, and citizenship includes a multilayered
construct, consisting of various collectivities: local, ethnic, national, state and trans-
25
state (Yuval-Davis 1999). Thus womens participation in MFIs constitutes different

collectivities. Consequently, their citizenship experience and experience of the public
and private domains are affected by their positioning in these collectivities (Yuval-
Davis 1999, 22; Collins 1994, cited in Mirza and Reay 2000, 69). Indeed, lower-caste
women and the poorest women will experience exclusion and patriarchal values more
severely than upper caste and not-so-poor women.
Nevertheless, despite specific historical and cultural manifestations, it is interesting
to note that gender discourses, norms and practices do permeate these two different
sites, thus creating a circuit of gender relations that is not confined to any location,
comprising culturally specific roles, identities, norms, and values that delineate men
and women as socially distinct beings (Howell 2007).
Thus the targeting of women for loans does not level the playing field between men
and women and create equality in gender norms and practices. It only makes the
permeation and circulation of gender norms and practices across various locations,
settings and institutions more visible. These gender norms reveal that external
interventions may not be effective owing to the cultural limits of choice (Kabeer 2008).
Moreover, without taking into account the social matrix, such interventions may result
in only individual transformations in only a liberal empowerment and not a
liberating one (Wilson 2008; Sardenberg 2010b).
However, while the problem is that gender norms circulate across various settings
and at various levels (individual/household), the solution, ironically, emerges within
this problematic setting. Since gender norms and practices permeate all settings, the
solution lies in recognizing that these inequities exist and in making a commitment to
equity and larger democratic characteristics, such as promoting economic well-being
through the lens of gender equity. In this sense, such a cultural framework is not just
conceptually valuable, but also provides empirical and policy lessons.
An example would illustrate this point. For instance, in a village in Karnataka,
people were experiencing problems with the price and supply of kerosene. It was being
sold at a higher price and rationed more than the official rate stipulated. Women raised
this issue in an SHG meeting and decided to complain. They staged several protests and
the shopkeeper would respond, but then go back to his old ways. It took a long while
before the matter was stabilized, but uncertainty among the women persists, as they
cannot be sure if they wield enough power to resolve the matter definitively. What is
important to note in this example is that the issue of kerosene supply was not an SHG
womens issue per se. It affected all women in the village, and hence all the households.
At a broader level, the issue was also about existing inequalities in the distribution of
resources, about a right to access resources that affected men, women, children, adults
and the entire village. Here the women were affected as individuals and were
vulnerable as a collective group.
In the context of MFIs, the emphasis on a gender mainstreaming approach in their
organization, described above, resonates with this perspective. However, it is confined
to an understanding of mens and womens roles in relation to the economic sphere.
The circuit of gender relations and norms suggested here cuts across several institutions
and different levels within which women interact.
Such a perspective is useful also because it speaks to womens empowerment at
both the individual and the collective level. By focusing on private domains, family and
households, it is able to recognize an individual womans need of a certain type of
26
loan, and her ability and vulnerability to be part of the MFI. By focusing on the more-
public domains such as NGOs, banks and MFIs, it is able to shed light on womens
needs and disadvantages as a collectivity.
An emphasis on the role of culture in understanding the access/empowerment
linkage analysed above does not overlook the few important studies undertaken with
an exclusive focus on culture. For instance, Rahman (1999) notes that the success of the
Grameen Bank in Bangladesh is also due to the banks understanding of cultural factors
embodied in women as their main client. Another study in Bangladesh also confirmed
the need for a cultural orientation in managing microfinance (Rana 2008). Similarly,
studies by Deubeul (2003) in Mali and Phlong (2009) on the informal credit system in
Cambodia indicate that the understanding of local culture assists the effectiveness of
microfinance in a society. A rather sophisticated analysis of the role of culture in MFIs
in Bandung, Indonesia, by Saefullah (2010) explores the influence of two kinds of
cultures, institutional and external, which have different effects on microfinance.
While cultural challenges are recognized in the literature, cultural influences take
different forms that are sometimes not easily visible. Just as the phenomenon of
poverty is multidimensional, so the strategies of its reduction are multidimensional. In
the same way, cultural factors are located not in static and easily identifiable categories
such as gender, caste and tribal groups. Rather, they exist in different processes and
forms that are not easily visible. The mechanisms such as patriarchal values, beliefs
about ones capacity, perceptions about oneself and others, and even morality
represent different forms in which culture is present. These mechanisms also represent
the dynamic nature of culture. For instance, self-perceptions and biases are constantly
being reproduced in interactions and thus affect efforts to improve ones chances.
In the context of MFIs, for instance, cultural influences on the functioning of
MFIs may be different from the role that culture may play in translating credit
lending into the empowerment of women. The emphasis on the circuit of gender
relations, aspiration towards gender equality and a focus on gender mainstreaming
in the organization of MFIs are instances of cultural influence represented by the
moral code of conduct (Crowley et al. 2007). Other studies on the membership of
poor people in organizations have emphasized the role of values and ethics in
organization and governance.5 Thus nuanced and sophisticated analyses of the role
of culture in understanding womens empowerment through MFIs are required for
informed policymaking.
Microfinance as a symbolic system

Culture is embedded in symbols, symbolic structures and representations. Symbols are
not intrinsic, fixed or natural (Saussure 1985), and the relationship between symbols and
the objects they represent is metaphoric (Eco 1985; Leach 1976; Ricoeur 1974, 1976).
The system of microfinance is a cultural system because it constitutes a symbolic structure
representing multiple meanings. It symbolizes not only an affordable and accessible non-
profit model of microfinance mediation for poor people, but also, true to the metaphoric
nature of symbols, the vibrancy of civil society and of democratic deepening. Lately, due
5 The basic finding is that successful membership based organizations for the poor often selectively adopt
positive elements of customary practices into their governance structures as vehicles for development, conflict
resolution, solidarity and appropriate moral behavior. Such codes define the ethics and value systems to which
members aspire and are sometimes modeled on religious or philosophical ideologies (Chen et.al. 2007, 34).
27
to the backlash it has experienced in parts of southern India, it has come to symbolize
capitalist greed. Thus what a symbol represents is a complex series of associations
between sense images and mental concepts (Kane 1997). Microfinance, therefore, as a
symbol, represents different things to different people at different points in time. In the
context of understanding and evaluating the relationship between microfinance and
womens empowerment, the symbolic lens of microfinance brings to light the conflicting
locations and roles of women in relation to this microcredit system. It represents, on the
one hand, women as agents in promoting the microfinance institutions and perhaps
changing the existing for-profit models of microfinance mediation and, on the other,
women experiencing an agency through being embedded in the system as important actors.
The latter symbol women experiencing an agency exists in places and in times
and for those women for whom it has made a significant difference in their lives.
Here MFIs and the key actors associated with them, such as banks, produce those
images and emotions that are positive. However, the former symbol women as
agents emerges in places where the effect has not been positive, where it symbolizes
failure and loss of agency. And these images change with time even in the same
places. For instance, MFIs in Andhra Pradesh symbolized womens empowerment
and development at one point of time and at present symbolize the opposite
corruption and exploitation.
The distinction between women as agents and women experiencing agency is also
symbolic of the democratic process in a given society. In recent years, the interest in
democratic process has focused on understanding the practice of democracy and on
evaluating the quality and deepening of democracy (Heller 2009). Democratic
deepening, as opposed to democratic consolidation, is closely related to the improving
socio-economic conditions and enhancing capability of citizens (Sen 1999) and to
creating a vibrant civil sphere (in contrast to political sphere) of a given society/country
(Heller 2009). In this context, the poverty-reduction programme as microcredit system
is related to the project of deepening democracy inasmuch as it promises to empower
women by helping them improve their everyday lives and providing them a space in
the civil sphere for participating in the development process.
The distinction between women as agents and women having an agency perfectly
maps the different degrees of democratic deepening. Women are key actors of the
microfinance system in that they comprise, demographically, the largest number of
borrowers of credit. This makes them prominent agents of microfinance. If democratic
deepening is about the exercise of civil and political rights and practice of citizenship,
then women acting as agents of microfinance are symbolic of a weak democratic
practice, in contrast to women experiencing an agency, which is indicative of a stronger
citizen practice and thus of deepened democracy.
The relationship between microfinance and democracy discussed above raises the
question of whether the degree of effectiveness of microfinance in relation to womens
empowerment is contingent on the degree of democratic deepening. From the policy
point of view, the symbolic cultural framework enables not only identification of what
microfinance symbolizes, but also location of factors, other than economic, that
influence the functioning of the microfinance system. It is no surprise that the recent
uprising against microfinance and the challenges to womens empowerment through
the credit system are in countries such as Bangladesh, India and Nepal where
vibrancy of civil society is wanting.
28
Framing processes
These symbolic meanings, however, are not fully coherent and autonomous. They,
too, are constructed, and come into existence through the framing of stakeholders
individuals and organizations. Framing is defined as conscious strategic efforts by
groups of people to fashion shared understandings of the world and of themselves
(McAdam, MacCarthy and Zald 1996, 6; Snow and Benford 1988). The backlash
is a good indicator of the struggle between the meanings constructed by different key
actors and stakeholders banks, governments and poor consumers, most of them
women. Since villagers and poor people historically have had access to loans through
exploitative village moneylenders, the microfinance phenomenon was framed by
banks and governments as a do-good financial institution, and not as an
exploitative market-oriented enterprise that thrives at the cost of the vulnerable and
marginalized population.
Conceptual understanding of these cultural processes, symbolic structures and
framing processes has policy relevance. First, the symbolic distinction between women
as agents and women experiencing agency helps in the design and implementation stages
of microfinance programmes. What this means is that most microfinance programmes
will include women, but only as agents. As indicated above, mainstreaming of the
gender approach in the organization of microfinance is crucial to achieving
empowerment of women through microfinance. Such an approach is synchronous
with the goal of women experiencing agency. Thus, it is crucial to distinguish different
kinds of microfinance programmes in relation to women in order to effectively achieve
the goal of their empowerment.
Second, the very recognition of cultural frames in relation to the microfinance system
provides scope for effective implementation of microcredit programmes: it helps
distinguish whether the function of microfinance to empower women, as discussed
above, is consciously framed in order to create a suitable market for microfinance or
whether microfinance has an intrinsic quality to empower women. The various
challenges to womens empowerment through the microfinance system that studies
bring to light reveal that the empowering ability is not intrinsic and needs conscious
efforts by the various actors concerned. The challenges also reveal that microfinance may
have that potential, but not everyone is willing to nurture that potential in spirit. Hence,
the discussion of the empowerment potential of microfinance is also a result of the
conscious manipulation of the various meanings of microfinance.
How successful these frames are is of course contingent on the effectiveness of the
microfinance programme itself. Thus, the recent backlash against the microfinance
system indicates that no matter how favourably the microcredit system is framed, its
success depends on the various understandings and interpretations by consumers
and that the interpretation in turn depends on the actual results and experiences of the
marginalized consumers.
From a policy point of view, the framing process helps explain, at least in part, why
microfinance programmes pose a challenge to womens empowerment, and guides the
extent to which microfinance programmes should pursue this goal.
Finally, while understanding how culture mediates between access and the
empowerment potential of MFIs, it is important to understand this from a relational
perspective (Bourdieu 1984), where different cultural factors symbols, norms, framing
processes shape the empowerment experience not as isolated independent factors,
29
but in relation to one another and in relation to and in interaction with structural
factors. Studies that identify the role of culture in the microfinance access/
empowerment linkage approach it from a substantialist perspective, where culture and
structure are seen as two discrete, isolated, independent variables. Thus the cultural and
structural factors constitute one another and derive their significance from the relations
that link them rather than from intrinsic features of individual elements (Swartz 1997).
In the case of providing empowerment through microfinance programmes, it is
difficult to disentangle the cultural notions of patriarchy and norms of reproductive
responsibility from womens structural vulnerability, such as lower literacy levels and
the experience of economic disempowerment they have experienced. Thus selecting
women as beneficiaries cannot be effective unless gender targeting is sensitive to the
mechanisms and everyday contexts of women, discussed above, that are constitutive of
their structural existence.
For this reason, it is essential that microfinance programmes achieve the
access/empowerment linkage if they are to thrive. The recent backlash against MFIs in
one of the historically biggest and perhaps most faithful Indian markets, the south-
eastern state of Andhra Pradesh, is a striking instance of this: the crisis was a result not
only of a failure of sustainability of financial institutions, which thus reduced access. It
was also due to weak capability- and skills-building services. This indicates that the real
empowering capacity of MFIs can be assessed both by its ability to provide women with
access to finance and through non-monetary channels skills-building or other
capability-enhancing services. It is these non-monetary channels that ensure the
empowerment of women. Thus the significance of access/empowerment linkages is
made visible by their absence.
30
IV. Lessons for IFAD
Among the policies related to poverty reduction, microfinance and microcredit

programmes occupy a central position. The concern that follows from this is: how
microcredit can be an effective intervention/strategy of poverty alleviation. Based on a
comprehensive review of the extant literature, we can identify key areas that can help
enhance the effectiveness of microfinance as an anti-poverty intervention.
(1) It is important to distinguish between the functions of microfinance and the potential
it carries to improve the livelihoods of poor and vulnerable people. The core
function of a microfinance programme is to provide financial services, to reach
poor women and men and give them access to savings and credit. However, the
potential of microcredit goes beyond the provision of financial services to poor
and vulnerable people. This distinction helps design microcredit programmes
more effectively, because while the smooth functioning of microfinance is
dependent on the stability of economic institutions such as banks and money-
lending organizations, the potential of microfinance is dependent on the health
of social and socio-economic institutions such as social norms, patriarchy and
education. As women are the key actors in the microfinance system, this
distinction becomes not just important, but necessary.
(2) The evidence of the contributions and limitations of microfinance programmes to

womens empowerment discussed above reveals that poverty-alleviation
interventions do not exist in isolation. Rather they are rooted within the larger
social matrix that influences them and that they, in turn, influence. This social
matrix consists of economic, political, ideological and cultural categories.
(3) This issue is also related to the potential of microfinance in that it indicates that
empowerment of women and poor and vulnerable people through microcredit
is also dependent on the larger social matrix. Given that women are the key
actors and targets of microfinance programmes, and given that they are the
vulnerable and disadvantaged sector of the population, it becomes extremely
important that MFIs take into account the social matrix within which womens
everyday lives are embedded.
(4) The empowerment potential and significance of the larger social matrix indicate
that microfinance needs to be designed not as an economic model, but as a
holistic approach to development, in which the role of culture becomes
especially important.
(5) It is also important to acknowledge that MFI influence on womens empowerment

is exclusive to women and cannot be applied in a similar way to men who borrow.
Specifically, while men and women may experience a similar positive impact of
31
MFIs, the negative effects of MFIs on womens empowerment are exclusive to

women. This is because, culturally, womens position makes them more
vulnerable to social conditions such as patriarchal culture, resulting in a negative
influence exclusively on their empowerment.
(6) A related issue requires attention to the categories of women benefiting from
loans. Thus women who have limited skills, do not have autonomous access to
resources and are dependent on husbands are those that benefit the least. The
policy lesson here is that to ensure that loans fulfil their potential in terms of
empowering women, institutions ought to first provide skills and get information
on the existing lives of these women.
(7) Identifying how culture interacts with microfinance promises an effective

implementation of microcredit programmes. This requires a more-sophisticated
and nuanced analysis of culture to understand the empowerment/access linkage.
The first task here is to locate the role of culture at two levels: (a) the organization of
MFIs; and (b) the different locations family/household, social networks, NGOs
within which womens lives are embedded. The second issue is to recognize that
culture is manifested in values, norms, symbols, emotions, gender identity, frames
and interpretations. In the context of the relationship between microfinance and
womens empowerment, there are a few forms of cultural structures that are
particularly relevant, both conceptually and in terms of policy. These include:
gendered norms, symbols and framing processes. In each of these forms, the
significance of culture in understanding and explaining the relationship between
microfinance and womens empowerment is revealed.
32
References
Abdullah, H.J., A.F. Ibrahim and J. King (2010) Womens voices, work and bodily
integrity in pre-conflict, conflict and post-conflict reconstruction processes in Sierra
Leone. IDS Bulletin 41 (2): 37-45.
Ashe, J., and L. Parrott (2002) PACTs Womens empowerment program in Nepal:
A savings- and literacy-led alternative to financial building. Journal of Microfinance 4
(2): 137-162.
Bali-Swain, R. (2006) Microfinance and womens empowerment. SIDA Working Paper.
Stockholm: Division of Market Development, Swedish International Development
Cooperation Agency.
Basnet, P. (1995) Trip report to Bangladesh. Dhaka: Save the Children.
Basu, J.P. (2006) Microfinance and women empowerment: An empirical study with
special reference to West Bengal. Mumbai, India: Indira Gandhi Institute of
Development Research.
Beckett, P. (2010) SKS Chairman defends loan practices. Wall Street Journal, 16 November.
Bellman, E. (2010) India Journal: Microfinance by the numbers. Wall Street Journal,
15 November.
Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction: A social critique of judgment of taste. Cambridge, MA,
USA: Harvard University Press.
Butler, J. (1990) Gender trouble. New York: Routledge.
Chang, A., and E. Bellman (2010) Bureaucrats fight back in battle to help the poor.
Wall Street Journal, 29 October.
Chen, M.A., R. Jhabvala, R. Kanbur, N. Mirani, K. Osner and C. Richards, eds. (2007)
Membership-based organizations of the poor. London: Routledge.
Cheston, S., and L. Kuhn (2002) Empowering women through microfinance.
In: S. Daley-Harris, comp. & ed. Pathways out of poverty: Innovations in microfinance
for the poorest families, pp. 167-228. Bloomfield, CT, USA: Kumarian Press.
CIDA (1999) CIDAs policy on gender equality. Quebec, Canada: Canadian International
Development Agency.
Collins, P.H. (1990) Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness and the politics of
empowerment. New York: Routledge.
Collins, P.H. (1994) Shifting the center: Race, class and feminist theorizing about
motherhood. In: D. Bassin, M. Honey and M. Kaplan, eds. Representations of
motherhood. New Haven, CT, USA: Yale University Press.
Cornwall, A., and J. Edwards (2010) Introduction: Negotiating empowerment. IDS
Bulletin 41 (2): 1-9.
Crowley, E., S. Baas, P. Termine, J. Rouse, P. Pazarny and G. Dionne (2007)
Organizations of the poor: Conditions for success. In: M. Chen, R. Jhabvala, R.
Kanbur, N. Mirani, K. Osner and C. Richards, eds. Membership-based organizations of
the poor. London: Routledge.
33
Deubeul, T.F. (2003) Banking on culture: Microcredit as incentive for cultural

conservation in Mali. In: J. Fernando, ed. Microfinance: Perils and prospects. Routledge
Series on Economic Development. London: Routledge.
DFID (2006) Making governance work for the poor. DFID White Paper. London:
Department for International Development.
Dunford, C. (2001) Building better lives: Sustainable integration of microfinance with
education in health, family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention for the poorest
entrepreneurs. Washington, DC: Microcredit Summit Campaign.
Eco, U. (1985) The semantics of metaphor. In: R.E. Innis, ed. Semiotics: An Introductory
Anthology, pp. 226-246. Bloomington, IN, USA: Indiana University Press.
Fisher, T., and M.S. Sriram, eds. (2002) Beyond micro-credit: Putting development back into
micro-finance. New Delhi: Vistaar Publications.
Gaiha, R., and M. Nandhi (2005) Microfinance, self-help groups and empowerment in
Maharashtra. Rome: International Fund for Agricultural Development.
Goetz, A., and R.S. Gupta (1996) Who takes the credit? Gender, power, and control over
loan use in rural credit programs in Bangladesh. World Development 24 (1): 45-63.
Goetz, A.M., and C. Nyamu Musembi (2008) Voice and womens empowerment: Mapping
a research agenda. Pathways Working Paper 2. Brighton, UK: Pathways of Womens
Empowerment Research Programme Consortium.
Grootaert, C. (2003) On the relationship between empowerment, social capital and community-
driven development. Working Paper No. 33074. Washington, DC: World Bank.
Hashemi, S., R. Schuler and A. Riley (1996) Rural credit programs and womens
empowerment in Bangladesh. World Development 24 (4): 635-653.
Heller, P. (2009) Democratic deepening in India and South Africa. Journal of Asian and
African Studies 44 (1): 97-122.
Hoffman, N. (2003) Introduction. In: N. Hoffman, ed. Womens true profession: Voices
from the history of teaching, 2nd ed., pp. 1-22. Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard
Education Press.
Howell, J. (2007) Gender and civil society: Time for cross-border dialogue. Social
Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society 14 (4) Winter: 415-436.
Hunt, J., and N. Kasynathan (2001) Pathways to empowerment? Reflections on
microfinance and transformations in gender relations in South Asia. In: C.
Sweetman, ed. Gender, development and money. Oxford, UK: Oxfam.
Hunt, J., and N. Kasynathan (2002) Reflections on microfinance and womens
empowerment. Development Bulletin 57: 71-75.
Huq, S. (2010) Negotiating Islam: Conservatism, splintered authority and
empowerment in urban Bangladesh. IDS Bulletin 41 (2): 97-105.
IFAD (2009) Rural finance policy. Rome.
Johnson, P. (2010) Unmarried in Palestine: Embodiment and (dis)empowerment in
the lives of single Palestinian women. IDS Bulletin 41 (2): 106-115.
Kabeer, N. (1998) Money cant buy me love? Re-evaluating gender, credit and empowerment
in rural Bangladesh. IDS Discussion Paper 363. Brighton, UK: Institute of
Development Studies, University of Sussex.
Kabeer, N. (1999) The conditions and consequences of choice: Reflections on the
measurement of womens empowerment. UNRISD Discussion Paper No. 108. Geneva:
United Nations Research Institute for Social Development.
34
Kabeer, N. (2001) Conflicts over credit: Re-evaluating the empowerment potential of
loans to women in rural Bangladesh. World Development 29 (1): 63-84.
Kabeer, N. (2008) Paid work, womens empowerment and gender justice: Critical pathways
of social change. Pathways Working Paper 3. Brighton, UK: Pathways of Womens
Empowerment Research Programme Consortium.
Kabeer, N., and L. Huq (2010) The power of relationships: Love and solidarity in a
landless womens organisation in rural Bangladesh. IDS Bulletin 41 (2): 79-87.
Kandiyoti, D. (1998) Gender, power and contestation: Rethinking bargaining with
patriarchy. In: Jackson and Pearson, eds. Feminist visions of development: Gender
analysis and policy. London and New York: Routledge.
Kane, A. (1997) Theorizing meaning construction in social movements: Symbolic
structures and interpretation during the Irish Land War, 1879-1882. Sociological
Theory 15 (3): 249-276.
Kay, T. (2003) Empowering women through self-help micro-credit programmes. Bangkok:
Gender and Development Section, Emerging Social Issues Division, United Nations
Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).
Krishna, A. (2003) Social capital, community driven development, and empowerment:
A short note on concepts and operations. Working Paper No. 33077. Washington, DC:
World Bank.
Krishnaraj, M., and T. Kay (2002) Report of review of IFAD gender mainstreaming
projects in Asia. Prepared for IFAD. (unpublished paper)
Leach, E. (1976) Culture and communication: The logic by which symbols are connected.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Ledesma, J. (2002) Empowerment impact report on TSPIs Kabuhayan program.
April. (draft)
Malhotra, A., S.R. Schuler and C. Boender (2002) Measuring womens empowerment as a
variable in international development. Background paper for World Bank Workshop
on Poverty and Gender: New Perspectives, 7 May 2002.
Mayoux, L. (1998) Participatory learning for womens empowerment in micro-finance
programmes: Negotiating complexity, conflict and change. IDS Bulletin 29 (4): 39-51.
Mayoux, L. (2001) Womens empowerment and microfinance: A participatory learning,
management, and action approach. UNIFEM Resource Manual for Practitioners and
Trainers. New York: United Nations Development Fund for Women. (draft)
Mayoux, L. (2005) Womens empowerment through sustainable micro-finance: Rethinking best
practice sustainable micro-finance for womens empowerment. www.genfinance.info/.
Mayoux, L. (2006) Womens empowerment and microfinance: A think piece for the
microfinance field. Sustainable Micro-finance for Womens Empowerment.
www.genfinance.info/.
Mayoux, L., and M. Hartl (2009) Gender and rural microfinance: Reaching and empowering
women a guide for practitioners. IFAD report. Rome: International Fund for
Agricultural Development.
McAdam, D., J.D. McCarthy and M. Zald (1996) Introduction: Opportunities,
mobilizing structures, and framing processes toward a synthetic, comparative
perspective in social movements. In: D. McAdam, J.D. McCarthy and M. Zald, eds.
Comparative perspectives on social movements: Political opportunities, mobilizing structures
and cultural framings, pp. 1-20. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
35
Microcredit Summit Campaign (2000) Empowering women with microcredit: 2000

Microcredit Summit Campaign Report. Washington, DC.
www.microcreditsummit.org/pubs/reports/socr/2000/report00.html.
Mirza, H.S., and D. Reay (2000) Redefining citizenship: Black women educators and
the third space. In: Arnot and Dillabough. Challenging democracy: International
perspectives on gender, education and citizenship, pp. 58-72. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Nair, T. (2011) Microfinance: Lessons from a crisis. Economic and Political Weekly XLV1
(6) 5 February.
Ngo, T.M-P. and Z. Wahhaj (2011) Microfinance and gender empowerment. Journal of
Development Economics, doi:10.1016/j.jdeveco.2011.09.003.
Phlong, P. (2009) Informal credit systems in Cambodia. DeKalb, IL, USA: Northern Illinois
University. (MA thesis)
PLAN (2001) International mid-term evaluation of Nirdhan. PLAN Microfinance Program
in Nepal. Kathmandu: PLAN International.
Priyadarshani, A., and S.A. Rahim (2010) Women watching television: Surfing between
fantasy and reality. IDS Bulletin 41 (2): 116-124.
Rahman, A. (1999) Micro-credit initiatives for equitable and sustainable development:
Who pays? World Development 27 (1): 6782.
Rana, M. (2008) Culture oriented management control systems of microfinance institutions in
Bangladesh. http://kamome.lib.ynu.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/10131/3797/1/5-Rana.pdf.
Ricoeur, P. (1974) The conflict of interpretations, edited by Don Ihde. Evanston, IL, USA:
Northwest University Press.
Ricoeur, P. (1976) Interpretation theory: Discourse and the surplus of meaning. Fort Worth,
TX, USA: Texas Christian University Press.
Saefullah, K. (2010) What Islamic Finance does (not) change. Paper submitted to the
committee of the Second Workshop on Islamic Finance, 17 March 2010 at the EM
Strasbourg Business School, Strasbourg, France, organized by EM Strasbourg
Business School and European Research Group.
Sanyal, P. (2009) From credit to collective action: The role of microfinance in
promoting womens social capital and normative influences. American Sociological
Review 74: 529-550.
Sardenberg, C. (2010a) Family, households and womens empowerment in Bahia,
Brazil, through the generations: Continuities or change? IDS Bulletin 41 (2): 88-96.
Sardenberg, C. (2010b) Liberal vs. liberating empowerment: A Latin American feminist
perspective on conceptualising womens empowerment. IDS Bulletin 39 (6)
December: 18-27.
Saussure, F. de (1985) The Linguistic Sign. In: Robert Innis, ed. Semiotics: An Introductory
Anthology, pp. 24-46 (reprinted from course in General Linguistics, 1959).
Bloomington, IN, USA: Indiana University Press.
Schuler, S., S. Hashemi, A. Riley and A. Akhter (1996) Credit programs, patriarchy and
mens violence against women in rural Bangladesh. Social Science and Medicine 43
(12): 1729-1742.
Sen, A.K. (1990) Gender and co-operative conflict. In: I. Tinker, ed. Persistent
inequalities. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Sen, A.K. (1993) Capability and well-being. In: Nussbaum and Sen, eds. The quality of
life. Helsinki: World Institute of Development Economics Research.
Sen, A.K. (1999) Development as freedom. New York: Knopf.
36
Shrestha, M. (1998) Report on self-help banking program and womens empowerment.
Kathmandu: Centre for Self-help Development (CSD).
Simanowitz, A., and A. Walker (2002) Ensuring impact: reaching the poorest while
building financially self-sufficient institutions, and showing improvement in the
lives of the poorest women and their families. Background paper for the Microcredit
Summit, New York, 10-13 November. (unpublished) www.microcreditsummit.org/
papers/papers.htm.
Snow, D., and R. Benford (1988) Ideology, frame resonance, and participant
mobilization. In: B. Klandermans, H. Kriesi and S. Tarrow, eds. International social
movement research, Vol. 1, pp. 197-217. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Swain, R.B., and F.Y. Wallentin (2009) Does microfinance empower women?
Evidence from self-help groups in India. International Review of Applied
Economics 23 (5): 541-556.
Swartz, D. (1997) Culture and power: The sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Chicago, IL, USA:
University of Chicago Press.
Todd, H. (1996) Women at the center: Grameen Bank borrowers after one decade. New York:
Westview Press.
UNIFEM (2000) Progress of the worlds women. New York: United Nations Development
Fund for Women.
Viswanath, V. (2003) Product to market assessment: The experience of Udyogini.
In: L. Mayoux, ed. Sustainable learning for womens empowerment: Ways forward in
micro-finance. New Delhi: Samskriti.
Walkerdine, V. (1990) Schoolgirl fictions. London and New York: Verso.
Wilson, K. (2008) Reclaiming agency, reasserting resistance. IDS Bulletin 39 (6): 83-91.
World Bank (2001) Engendering development: Through gender equality in rights, resources, and
voice summary. Washington, DC. www.worldbank.org/gender/prr/engender
summary.pdf.
Yuval-Davis, N. (1999) The multi-layered citizen: Citizenship in the age of globalization.
International Feminist Journal of Politics I (1): 119-136.
Zaidi, S.A., H. Jamal, S. Javeed and S. Zaka (2007) Social impact assessment of
microfinance programmes. Islamabad: European Union/Pakistan Financial Services
Sector Reform Programme.
Zaman, H. (2001) Assessing the poverty and vulnerability impact of micro-credit in
Bangladesh: a case study of BRAC. Background paper for World Bank World
Development Report 2000/2001. Washington, DC: World Bank. (unpublished)
37
IFAD
The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) works with poor rural people to
enable them to grow and sell more food, increase their incomes and determine the direction of
their own lives. Since 1978, IFAD has invested about US$13.2 billion in grants and low-interest
loans to developing countries through projects empowering about 400 million people to break
out of poverty, thereby helping to create vibrant rural communities. IFAD is an international
financial institution and a specialized UN agency based in Rome the United Nations food
and agricultural hub. It is a unique partnership of 167 members from the Organization of the
Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), other developing countries and the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Contacts:
Ganesh Thapa
IFAD
Via Paolo di Dono, 44
00142 Rome, Italy
Tel: +39 06 54592098
E-mail: g.thapa@ifad.org
Valentina Camaleonte
IFAD
00142 Rome, Italy
Tel: +39 06 54592670
E-mail: v.camaleonte@ifad.org
www.ifad.org
Occasional Papers Series
1. Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty in the Asia and the Pacific region: Progress,
prospects and priorities, by Raghav Gaiha, Katsushi Imai and Mani A. Nandhi [2006]
2. A methodology for assessment of the impact of microfinance on empowerment and
vulnerability, by Raghav Gaiha and Ganesh Thapa [November 2006]
3. History and spread of the self-help affinity group movement in India: The role played
by IFAD, by Aloysius P. Fernandez [July 2007]
4. Supermarkets, smallholders and livelihood prospects in selected Asian countries, by
Raghav Gaiha and Ganesh Thapa [October 2007]
5. Agricultural technology choices for poor farmers in less-favoured areas of South and East
Asia, by John Pender [April 2008]
6. Assessment of likely impacts of avian influenza on rural poverty reduction in Asia:
Responses, impacts and recommendations for IFAD strategy, by Jim Hancock and
Gyudam Cho [August 2008]
7. Drought, coping mechanisms and poverty: Insights from rainfed rice farming in Asia,
by Sushil Pandey and Humnath Bhandari [January 2009]
8. Sustainability of rural development projects: Best practices and lessons learned by IFAD
in Asia, by Tango International [May 2009]
India Case Study [August 2009]
Lao Peoples Democratic Republic Case Study [August 2009]
Philippines Case Study [August 2009]
Viet Nam Case Study [August 2009]
9. Institutions and rural services: Lessons from IFAD-supported projects in Asia, by Ashok Seth
[August 2009]
10. Fiscal stimulus, agricultural growth and poverty in Asia and the Pacific, by Raghav
Gaiha, Katsushi S. Imai, Ganesh Thapa and Woojin Kang [September 2010]
11. Interrelationships between labour outmigration, livelihoods, rice productivity and gender
roles, by Thelma R. Paris, Maria Fay Rola-Rubzen, Joyce S. Luis, Truong Thi Ngoc
Chi, Chaicharn Wongsamun and Donald Villanueva [December 2010]
12. Policy responses to the food price crisis and their implications: The case of four Greater
Mekong Subregion countries, by Mercedita A. Sombilla, Arsenio M. Balisacan,
Donato B. Antiporta and Rowell C. Dikitanan [December 2011]
International Fund for
Agricultural Development
00142 Rome, Italy
Telephone: +39 06 54591
Facsimile: +39 06 5043463
E-mail: ifad@ifad.org
www.ifad.org
www.ruralpovertyportal.org

13 PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

13 PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Womens empowerment

Enabling poor rural people to overcome poverty

Womens empowerment and microfinance

The thirteenth in a series of discussion papers

All rights reserved

I. Key concepts: Empowerment, empowerment and microfinance,

II. Microfinance and womens empowerment: Evidence from the field 15

III. Microfinance and womens empowerment: A sociocultural framework 23

IV. Lessons for IFAD 31

ARDCI Agricultural and Rural Development for Catanduanes, Inc.

While there is a shared understanding and general consensus on the functions of

Mr Subramanyam, political leader, Andhra Pradesh:

Y.V. Shiv Narain, Vice-President, Spandana Sphoorty Financial Ltd, a microfinance

While there is a shared understanding and general consensus on the functions of

Microfinance and womens empowerment

Woman versus women

Microfinance empowers women

Challenges to empowerment through microfinance

Economic and politico-organizational challenges

3 Quoted in Cheston and Kuhn (2002).

The evidence discussed above of the contributions and limitations of microfinance

Culture and organizational challenges

Culture and gender challenges

state (Yuval-Davis 1999). Thus womens participation in MFIs constitutes different

Microfinance as a symbolic system

Among the policies related to poverty reduction, microfinance and microcredit

(2) The evidence of the contributions and limitations of microfinance programmes to

(5) It is also important to acknowledge that MFI influence on womens empowerment

MFIs, the negative effects of MFIs on womens empowerment are exclusive to

(7) Identifying how culture interacts with microfinance promises an effective

Deubeul, T.F. (2003) Banking on culture: Microcredit as incentive for cultural

Microcredit Summit Campaign (2000) Empowering women with microcredit: 2000

You might also like