Microcredit on Women Enpowerment

This article examines the role of gender in the use of digital finance in Kenya, including the well-known case of mobile money but also the emerging use of smartphone apps, payment tills, digital credit services, and digital fund-raising computer programs. Development professionals have explicitly feminist goals in bringing digital finance to women in the Global South. In several recent reports, they outline the belief that gender norms are a barrier to women's use of finance. They hope digital finance will bring women agency and control over money and consequently shift restrictive gender norms. This article offers a critique of these assumptions based on ethnographic conversations, a diary exercise, and network self-portraiture conducted in Kenya in 2016 among both rural farmers and urbanites. Adopting a distributed agency perspective, the ethnographic study demonstrates that Kenyan women and men use digital finance not to seek individual control of their money but to produce themselves as connected and trustworthy members of financial groups and collectivities. Gender norms may not hinder women from finance but rather enhance and deepen women's and men's financial relationships and bring women success in amassing funds.

Our paper explores how poor rural households in India are increasingly accumulating debt through micro-finance initiatives channelled through local self-help groups (SHGs). The aim of micro-finance and SHGs is to provide a cheap source of capital for investment in self-sustaining economic practices – typified by the Velugu programme. However, the reality of micro-finance has been more complicated. It has created a class- and caste-related debt-dependency and vulnerability whilst also channelling poor households, and women in particular, into subordinate areas of the economy, which ultimately serve to maintain fundamental inequalities in Indian society. The initiatives may, in addition, be viewed as aspects of broader processes of financialisation.

Snippet from the paper:
Introduction
When one returns from abstraction to real-world contexts, one confronts a messy interconnection of causal processes. This is particularly so in periods and locations undergoing significant change. It is widely acknowledged that India, as one of the BRIC economies, is undergoing rapid urban transformations that are subject to global and local forces. There have also been a number of changes in the conditions of the rural poor. Bonded labour still occurs that ties the very poorest, often of Dalit or ‘scheduled castes’ (SC), to long-term farming servitude on another’s land; but the traditional labour relations of the very poorest have diversified.1 Poor rural households now undertake a range of activities (Harriss-White, 2003; Brass, 2008; Breman et al., 2009).2 Migrant work, often in construction or regional industries and particularly amongst males, has grown. Remittances by migrants and new attitudes amongst landlords to how they might use their land and capital have begun to change local land and labour relations. The growing problem of periodic flood and drought in some regions has also produced change (Bosher et al., 2007). With change have come new issues of social and economic mobility. In keeping with many processes that weave global, national and local threads, new circumstances have created both positive and negative aspects: oppor
tunity, but also insecurity. The combination of micro-finance implemented through forms of initiatives between the state and different kinds of banks – state-backed, commercial, cooperatives - and self-help groups (SHG), which administer local pools of capital for small loans, provides one such example (Morduch, 1999; Karmaker, 2005 & 2008; Srinivasan, 2009).
Rural women in particular have been prime movers and beneficiaries of SHGs.

The study explores and evaluates the women‟s experiences with
microcredit facility for the purpose of women empowerment. While there is a
mutual understanding and general consensus on closer nexus between women
empowerment and microcredit, women are disempowered for variety of
reasons such as lacks of financial resources, being a member of patriarchy
society, misinterpreted religious concepts about her role and position in the
society, and cultural restraints. However, microcredit, globally promoted as a
“miracle cure” for the financially weak, especially women who face so many
problems accessing microcredit for variety of reason, which have been
discussed in detail in this study

This paper examines the impact of microfinance on some selected women borrower respondents of Bangladesh, who have been selected through a systematic random survey process. This is a quantitative research based on primary and secondary data. The primary data was collected through a structured questionnaire on sixty women borrowers of the Dhaka City, Bangladesh. This paper finds that microfinance has a highly significant positive impact on the income of these women borrower respondents. Moreover, though microfinance encourages for savings and buying new
asset but it has no significant impact on their asset building and savings.Overall, there has been a mixed outcome from this cross-sections data: microfinance has been found as a matter for women borrowers’ income increasing aspects, whereas not much effective in increasing savings or building up of assets. Finally the paper recommends some steps to increase effectiveness of microfinance on the women borrowers, including expanding training facilities and lower interest rates particularly for women borrowers.

Türkiye ekonomisinde öncelikli çözülmesi gereken sorunların başında kadınların istihdama katılım oranlarındaki yetersizlik gelmektedir. Bu zamana kadar gerek devlet tarafından gerekse özel sektör tarafından uygulanan kadın istihdamını arttırıcı politikalara rağmen bu
sorunun önüne geçilememiştir. Bu amaca yönelik uygulamalardan biri de mikro kredilerdir.
Kadınların iş gücüne katılımının arttırılması ve yoksulluk sorunu ile mücadele noktasında mikro krediler dikkat çekmektedir. Bu çalışmanın amacı, mikro kredi uygulanmasının işlevini genel anlamda açıkladıktan sonra Türkiye’deki mikro kredi uygulamalarının kadın istihdamı
ve ekonomik büyüme üzerindeki etkisini ve etkinliğini sınamaktır. Bu bağlamda çalışmada yoksullukla mücadelede ve istihdam bağlamında Türkiye’de kullandırılan mikro kredilerin regresyon analizi yapılmış olup modeldeki sonuçlara göre Türkiye’de kullandırılan kredideki 1 birimlik artış, kendi hesabına çalışan kadın sayısında 0.045 birimlik ve ekonomik büyümede 0.05 birimlik artışa neden olmaktadır. ARDL sonuçlarına göre reel gelirin uzun dönem esnekliği beklentiler doğrultusunda pozitif (0.00612) olarak tahmin edilmiştir. Bu Sonuca göre Türkiye’de mikro kredilerde %1’lik artış reel GSYH’yi %0,05 arttırmaktadır. Ayrıca yaklaşık 5,5 yıl gibi bir sürede kısa dönemli sapmalar tekrar uzun dönem dengesine gelmektedir.

Microfinance institutions (MFIs) in the Philippines have gained a reputation for operating as a for-profit institution
reaching the poor through micro-lending. The problem or issue which the study addresses is to determine how MFIs
in the Philippines are able to attain operational self-sufficiency, the established indicator for financial viability among
microfinance institutions, in spite of high transactions cost. The phenomenon may be verified by the following research
question: does the behavior of operational and transactions costs among group and individual microfinance lenders
manifest experience or learning curve spillovers and a U-shaped supply curve? The study has two objectives. First,
using appropriate measures of financial and social performance, the study shall empirically verify the phenomenon of
experience or learning curve spillovers among MFIs. Second is to estimate the supply curve for loans to the unbanked
poor and verify that it is U-shaped.
The results of the pooled least squares with cross-section random effects regression estimation show that both
NGOs and rural banks are attaining both objectives of operational self-sufficiency and moderate to good social
performance, through the spillover effects of learning, that is, fast learning for rural banks and moderate learning for
NGOs. Operational and transactions costs are high but decreasing for both rural banks and NGOs. Older, more mature
NGOs and rural banks are able to set transactions cost at the prescribed level of 11%-25%. Such costs ensure that the
MFIs operate in order to both financial performance and outreach.

Abstract – Credit is one of the most crucial inputs in the process of development. By extending small loans to poor individuals, microcredit, specially SHGs enables its borrowers to take up income earning activities that lead to a series of improvements in their economic situation. In addition to the improved income earning ability, microcredit has been increasingly promoted for its positive impact on empowerment, especially for women borrowers. Present study is an attempt to evaluate the same.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) call for significant action on health by 2030 that includes, interalia, to ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services, including for family planning, information and education, and the integration of reproductive health into national strategies and programs, achieve universal health coverage, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines for all etc.
Healthy people (and empowered women) are better able to contribute to the social, political and economic development of their communities and countries. Studies show that good health has a positive effect on development and that decreases in overall morbidity and mortality can help to drive productivity and economic growth.1
Gender-sensitive and inclusive, rights-based approaches are essential both to improve health outcomes and increase social and economic well-being. Gender inequality and gender-based violence are strong drivers of poor health and development outcomes for women and adolescent girls. Poverty and poor health are closely linked. Poverty leads to unhealthy living and working environments, poor nutrition and illiteracy, all of which increase vulnerability to disease and limit access to basic health and social services and affordable medicines. Sustained attention to the negative health consequences of gender inequality is essential to achieving SDG 5 (Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls).2

This paper looks of implementing and establishing social business models in developing countries (based on the experience in Business Management, in her personal life and also experience as a volunteer and international advisor in Lotus Heart NGO in Nepal, having the proper field experience and the knowledge of the real situation in developing countries).
In this particular case, a health clinic and small medical post branches for the community in the Sindhupalchak district of Nepal that would include health awareness and income generation activities, and create the conditions to have more doctors fixated there like promoting volunteer foreigner work and exchange of skills by implementing in this main clinic, a centre for overseas medical doctors, nurses, paramedics and medical students; integration of different type of medicine practices. Meanwhile, through this Health project, we can activate also “Responsible Tourism” and Organic Coffee business, that can be a good solution for gender equity and unemployment problem among Women and youth in this specific district of Nepal.

Keywords: Poverty reduction; Health; Female Empowerment, Gender Equity; SDG agenda 2030; Social Business; SDG 3; SDG 5; philanthropic; interdependence.

Gender inequalities are of the main problems in almost every society. Like all other parts of the system, economic and business environment haven't attempted sufficiently in struggling with this issue. When these inequalities combined with development problems the growth of poverty among women and their exclusion from society multiplies. Although there is so much struggle for constructing equal society women are still considered as ignorant part of the society and hence, vulnerable beings, who have to be protected and taken care of. In this sense women have not much chance for being " independent individual " both in social and economic terms. However these constraints upon women's vulnerability and inability are tried to be changed by Microfinance system to move from the perspective of women's empowerment. In this paper, we try to analyze whether the performance of practices by the non-governmental organizations ability to achieve objective to improve the living conditions and interest of the women in the society or not by comparing to micro credit organizations in Turkey. We also try to answer whether women's participation in employment contributes to well-being their lives and contributes their role in working life.

Introductory note: This paper is an earlier version--now including a number of updates and revisions-- of what became a chapter in my 2010 book "Contemporary Feminist Theory and Activism: Six Global Issues," Broadview. It's my view that these themes are more urgently in need of address than ever, and I will explore them in a slightly different context in my new book, "A Manifesto for an Eco-Feminist Post-Humanism," (Lexington, forthcoming 2016).

Abstract:

While Alison Jaggar’s contribution to the feminist analysis of heteropatriarchal capitalism offers key insight into the history and mechanisms of the oppressive economic conditions faced daily by millions of women, it may not be as well suited to the issues confronting contemporary theorists and activists. I think this is so for at least four reasons: First, while corporate exploitation, the export of Western standards of consumer culture, and the continuing exhaustion of environmental resources are hardly new to the 21st century, each in its own way has been transformed by the globalizing of labor in tandem with the advances of technology or, as Donna Haraway puts it, technoscience. Analyses of the relationship between capitalism and patriarchy must, then, include these factors particularly as they bear on the rapidly changing conditions of developing world women, and as the economic gap between Western and developing nations grows ever wider.

Second, however perceptive, few writers in Jaggar’s 1980’s were in a position to foresee the consequences of the globalized market, and hence of the virtually exponential growth of the Westernizing culture industry into the 21st century. More than merely an instrument for the export of Western values, and revolutionized by the Internet, the culture industry appropriates the value associated with creative or praxis labor and transforms it into the desire to imitate the popular, well heeled, sexy, and powerful.  Given the commodifying of sexuality and reproduction already deeply rooted in Western culture, it’s not surprising that the impact of the culture industry on women and girls is both disproportionately exploitive, and—contrary to the Internet’s liberating potential—that it may actually reinforce patriarchal institutions including the traditional family, prostitution, pornography, and masculinist (male-centered) religion.

Third, although there’s little doubt that Western values permeate the culture industry, it would be naïve to suggest that these are the only values whose influence is felt at this scale. As the recent resurgence of religiously motivated terrorism amply illustrates, other systems of value—even systems purportedly anti-capitalist—have had significant impact on the ways in which Westerners understand their increasingly fragile cultural hegemony. Terrorism, moreover, may be “merely” the most extreme example of the possible effects of alternate and competing systems of value. As Chandra Mohanty argues in Feminism Without Borders, a number of other factors have begun to play crucial roles within the global exchange not only of currency and labor, but also of power realized in other (though enduringly patriarchal and racist) ways.

Microcredit has come under severe academic criticism in recent years, but the diversity of local practices and discourses that respond to and critique microcredit is still under-examined. By exploring emergent entrepreneurial practices and strategic loan avoidance in Darjeeling, India, expressed locally in narratives of “risk,” this article emphasizes the counter-hegemonic aspects of local engagements with microcredit. We contend that women are neither passive victims of nor willing participants in microcredit. They selectively appropriate the global discourse of microcredit to formulate a skeptical subject position that criticizes the practice. Simultaneously, they contest microcredit’s complicity with local patriarchies that exploit their labor and entrepreneurial activity. While critical of the indebtedness microcredit causes them, women value the entrepreneurial possibilities it opens up. We acknowledge the importance of the predominant Foucauldian–Marxist critiques of microcred...

Micro-credit is the practice of making small loans to people with little or no collateral to help sustain and develop self-employment initiatives.  It has been hailed as a tool for poverty alleviation, economic growth, community development and reducing gender inequities.  The acclaimed effectiveness of this development strategy has resulted in an international movement to replicate it around the world, raising significant questions for planners about the transferability of the model. 

The purpose of the thesis is to examine micro-credit in the context of Nicaragua, seeking to determine the ‘replicability’ of the strategy and its socio-economic development potential, particularly for women.  The study focused on five micro-credit programs operating in and around the capital city Managua.  Research methods included a literature review, interviews with credit program administrators, with relevant government agencies, and with a sample of borrowers from each of the programs. 

The study indicates that micro-credit is an appropriate development strategy in Nicaragua.  A convergence of factors has made self-employment a vital part of urban survival strategies, particularly for women and their families.  With little government support for this sector, non-governmental programs are timely.  Micro-credit was also revealed as an effective strategy, helping to sustain self-employment in a country with few social safety nets.  In some cases, it is helping people develop viable businesses.

The study nonetheless pointed to several limitations to micro-credit as a poverty alleviation strategy.  People in the lowest income sections of the population were not as likely to benefit from the business development potential of credit and were most burdened by the cost recovery policies of the programs.  Although women make up 80% of borrowers, few programs address women’s need to move out of traditional occupations in which they experience inadequate income earning opportunities.  As an economic development tool, micro-credit cannot address issues like market saturation, or lack of markets for crafts and other products. 

Recommendations focus on ways that credit programs could improve their socio-economic development potential by expanding training and marketing opportunities for borrowers.  The national government is encouraged to recognise the importance of the micro-enterprise sector and to remove legislative barriers to profitability.  Finally, international development agencies are cautioned not to overemphasise the poverty alleviation potential of micro-credit, nor to promote cost recovery goals at the expense of providing low-cost loans to the poor.

One of the major goals of the seventh five-year plan of Bangladesh is to achieve gender equality and women's empowerment in all spheres of life. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on gender equality and women's empowerment also have several specific targets which include, inter alia, that women should have full and effective participation at all levels of decision making in political, economic and public life. This paper analyzes the impact of inclusive financing through microcredit programs in empowering rural women in Bangladesh. The paper uses survey data collected from 128 women of Gazipur district by using structured questionnaire during May-June 2019. The empirical result reveals that only 46 percent of the respondent women have a reasonable level of empowerment and among them, 54 percent are covered by microcredit programs. The study also finds that factor like the use of inclusive financing by self is significantly associated with women empowerment. The paper also reveals that borrowers have significantly higher levels of empowerment than non-borrowers. Moreover, it has been indicated that, among the demographic factors of the women, the total income of a respondent family is very important for women's empowerment. For policy implications, it therefore imperative to provide microcredit to rural women and to monitor them regularly to ensure the use of this money by self in productive sectors.. This will make them more likely to have higher levels of empowerment.

Özet
Mikrofinans kuruluşları yoksullukla mücadelede finansal kaynakları farklı bir yöntemle yoksullara ulaştırarak toplumsal sorumluluklarını yerine getirmektedirler. Bu çalışmada mikrofinans kuruluşlarının çalışma sistemleri anlatılmakta ayrıca bu kuruluşların finansal kaynakları ve işlevleri üzerinde durulmaktadır. Mikrofinans kuruluşlarının daha fazla kredi verebilmek için ülke sınırlarını aşarak dünya sermaye
piyasalarıyla entegre oldukları saptanmıştır. Ancak mikrofinans kuruluşlarının gelecekteki fon kaynakları yerel tasarruflardır. Sınırlı yerel fon kaynaklarının verimli yerlerde kullandırılmasıyla yoksulluğun azaltılmasına yardımcı olacaktır. Bu amaç da mikrofinans kuruluşlarının finansal fonksiyonlarını
tam olarak yerine getirmesiyle mümkündür.

Anahtar Sözcükler: Yoksulluk, mikrofinans, mikrokredi.

Microfinance Model within the Struggle against Poverty and The Financial Functions of Microfinance Institutions

Abstract

To meet required social responsibilities Microfinance institutions pass through financial resources to the poor with different methods for struggling against poverty. In this study we describe operating system and focus on financial resources and functions of microfinance institutions. In order to create
more available funds, microfinance institutions are becoming increasingly integrated with world capital markets. However future sources of funds will be mainly domestic savings. Recycling these limited domestic savings into productive loans for the poor will help to lower poverty. This aim will be true
when the microfinance institutions act correctly and efficiently.
Key Words: Poverty, microfinance, microcredit.