A qualitative examination of microfinance and intimate partner violence in India: Understanding the role of male backlash and household bargaining models

The relationship between microcredit and Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) has been explored in numerous quantitative studies. These alternately claim that microcredit exacerbates, reduces or has no impact on IPV. These contrasting findings are problematic, however, particularly as hundreds of billions of dollars continue to be invested in microcredit and women’s economic empowerment programs. This article, by contrast, uses qualitative methods to examine the perceptions of both female microcredit users and their male partners in West Bengal, India, drawing on 34 focus group discussions and 29 one-to-one interviews. This study analyses women’s and men’s understanding of IPV and the impact they see that a microcredit program has had on violence. It reviews these perspectives and seeks to understand the contradictory studies on microcredit and IPV through drawing on feminist economic and sociological theories of violence. This paper illustrates the importance of male backlash models, especially at the beginning stages of a program, but indicates that after time, a household bargaining model also holds relevance. This highlights the significant temporal dimensions in the relationship between microcredit and IPV and demonstrates the importance of six key factors for a household bargaining model to hold.