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Microcredit and Women’s Empowerment: Have We Been Looking at the Wrong Indicators?

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  • Supriya Garikipati

Abstract

Impact evaluation studies routinely find that lending to women benefits their households, but not necessarily the women concerned. The reasons for this paradox are not well understood. This, I argue, is partly because of the obsession with viewing women’s empowerment as outcomes alone and ignoring the processes leading to these. I investigate this paradox by examining the processes surrounding loan use for a case study from rural India. The way in which women’s loans are used is found to be critical to their empowerment. Specifically, women whose loans are invested in household assets can find the process disempowering. This is because women lack co-ownership in household’s productive assets. Where loan diversion by households cannot be controlled, women’s joint ownership of household assets emerges as integral to their empowerment. This paper cautions against the excessive focus on women’s outcomes as a measure of their empowerment.

Suggested Citation

  • Supriya Garikipati, 2010. "Microcredit and Women’s Empowerment: Have We Been Looking at the Wrong Indicators?," Working Papers CEB 10-030, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    • Handle: RePEc:sol:wpaper:2013/57623
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Naila Kabeer, 1999. "Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the Measurement of Women's Empowerment," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 30(3), pages 435-464, July.
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    Cited by:

    1. Nassani, Abdelmohsen A. & Aldakhil, Abdullah Mohammed & Abro, Muhammad Moinuddin Qazi & Islam, Talat & Zaman, Khalid, 2019. "The impact of tourism and finance on women empowerment," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 234-254.
    2. Robin A. Richardson, 2018. "Measuring Women’s Empowerment: A Critical Review of Current Practices and Recommendations for Researchers," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 137(2), pages 539-557, June.

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    Keywords

    Microcredit; Women’s Empowerment; Outcomes; Processes; India;
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