Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject Politics - Topic: Development Politics, grade: 1,3, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, language: English, abstract: This assignment aims to shed some light into the turbidity of women’s access to microcredits and their corresponding empowerment. Despite there is a range of literature reviewing the success of specific microfinance programs in different communities, here an overall picture of microcredits’ capabilities to empower women will be developed. From 1997 when the first Microfinance Summit took place until today, 18 summits brought together microfinance practitioners, educational institutions, donors, financial institutions and non-governmental organizations to facilitate knowledge experience sharing in microfinance. While pushing this topic forward, the Microfinance Summit Campaign works on four issues. Next to “Reaching the Poorest”, “Financial Self-Sustainability” and “A Positive, Measurable Impact” is “Empowering Women” among the top four goals. Thereby microfinance and empowering women just covers two essential objectives of the United Nations Development Goals set in 2015. But the potential to empower the poorest people of the world were already recognized in the 1970’s and 1980’s when the first microfinance intuition, the Garmeen Bank in Bangladesh, was established. In the following decades, microfinance instruments, especially microcredits, underwent a unique success story and became one of the most popular development tools. In 2013, microfinance institutions counted 211 million clients, among them 114 poorest borrowers.

Micro-credit has been taken as a prominent tool for poverty alleviation and women's empowerment. This book has presented the double-edged claim of microcredit proponents that microcredit not only supports rural poor to come out of poverty, it also empowers poor rural women in particular. This book is mainly grounded on research based on Bandipur Rural Municipality of Nepal. It has made the study of women from 3 settlements of Bandipur, who had availed microcredit facilities from some microcredit providing institutions or organizations in Bandipur. The data has been analyzed through qualitative data analysis under which both descriptive and explanatory methods. The data analysis is made on the basis of caste/ethnic group. The results showed that most of the females who availed the facility of microcredit finally got socioeconomic empowerment through acquiring the access to capital, control over resources, self-esteem, confidence level, decision making power, etc. Results are varied on Dalit, Janajati and Brahmin/Chhetri women. The findings showed that microcredit has significant impact on the upliftment of socio-economic empowerment of the borrowers of Bandipur. The income pattern of the respondent women has been changed. Daily wage earning and agricultural production were the main source of income before joining the program but after joining the microcredit program the sources of income shifted to small scale business, sale of livestock product and agricultural product. Entrepreneurship in microcredit beneficiary women has been increased. Apart from the changing income pattern, role of women in decision making about the resources mobilization for household activities, participation in societal affairs has also been increased. The economic dependency had restricted women in decision making power in all the spheres not only economical but also in other family and social affairs. But it has been changed now. Since, women are capable to generate regular income from their small enterprises; their dependency on male for money is reduced. Women's confidence and social status has increased after involvement in MC programs. Microcredit, though an effective poverty alleviating instrument, is not suitable for all categories of the poor. For those trapped in chronic poverty, no assets base to protect themselves from the countless webs of shocks, microcredit can be ineffective and sometimes counterproductive. Some cases of Dalit settlement have proved it.

Micro-credit has been taken as a prominent tool for poverty alleviation and women's empowerment. This book has presented the double-edged claim of microcredit proponents that microcredit not only supports rural poor to come out of poverty, it also empowers poor rural women in particular. This book is mainly grounded on research based on Bandipur Rural Municipality of Nepal. It has made the study of women from 3 settlements of Bandipur, who had availed microcredit facilities from some microcredit providing institutions or organizations in Bandipur. The data has been analyzed through qualitative data analysis under which both descriptive and explanatory methods. The data analysis is made on the basis of caste/ethnic group. The results showed that most of the females who availed the facility of microcredit finally got socioeconomic empowerment through acquiring the access to capital, control over resources, self-esteem, confidence level, decision making power, etc. Results are varied on Dalit, Janajati and Brahmin/Chhetri women. The findings showed that microcredit has significant impact on the upliftment of socio-economic empowerment of the borrowers of Bandipur. The income pattern of the respondent women has been changed. Daily wage earning and agricultural production were the main source of income before joining the program but after joining the microcredit program the sources of income shifted to small scale business, sale of livestock product and agricultural product. Entrepreneurship in microcredit beneficiary women has been increased. Apart from the changing income pattern, role of women in decision making about the resources mobilization for household activities, participation in societal affairs has also been increased. The economic dependency had restricted women in decision making power in all the spheres not only economical but also in other family and social affairs. But it has been changed now. Since, women are capable to generate regular income from their small enterprises; their dependency on male for money is reduced. Women's confidence and social status has increased after involvement in MC programs. Microcredit, though an effective poverty alleviating instrument, is not suitable for all categories of the poor. For those trapped in chronic poverty, no assets base to protect themselves from the countless webs of shocks, microcredit can be ineffective and sometimes counterproductive. Some cases of Dalit settlement have proved it.

"Two persistent problems that affect a significant portion of Indian women are poverty and violation of their human rights. In recent years, micro-credit has come to be viewed as a vital tool to ameliorate both conditions. However, there are few studies in the Indian context which test the validity of the assumption that there is a linear link between micro-credit, poverty reduction and women's empowerment. This volume brings together revealing case studies of micro-credit interventions made by six non-governmental and quasi-governmental bodies in five states of peninsular India, several of which have been supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)." "The six case studies are diverse in terms of their socio-economic and geo-political contexts, the nature and ideological orientation of the intermediary organizations, the groups largeted by the projects (exclusively women or men and women); and the life-spans of the projects. Despite their differences, all the studies offer useful lessons on the institutional structures and processes that do or do not facilitate women's empowerment and poverty reduction, while exploring the potential and limitations of micro-credit to achieve these twin goals. This book will be useful for students and scholars of economics, women's studies, development studies and social work, while being of equal interest to policy-makers planners, activists and NGOs."--BOOK JACKET.

Microcredit has been seen in recent decades as having great potential for aiding development in poor developing countries, with Bangladesh being one of the countries which has pioneered microcredit and implemented it most widely. This book, based on extensive original research, explores how microcredit works in practice, and assesses its effectiveness. It discusses how microcredit, usually channelled through women, is often passed to the men of the family, a practice disapproved of by some, but regarded as acceptable by borrowers who have a communal approach to debt, rather than viewing debt as something held by single individuals. The book demonstrates how the rules around microcredit are often seem as irksome by the borrowers, how lenders often charge high rates of interest and work primarily to preserve their institutions, thereby going against the spirit of the microcredit movement, and how borrowers often end up on a downward spiral, deeper and deeper in debt. Overall, the book argues that although microcredit does much good, it also has many drawbacks.

Using a case study of Bangladesh, and based on a long term participatory observation method, this book investigates claims of the success of microcredit, as well as the critiques of it, in the context of women’s empowerment. It confronts the distinction between women’s increasing wealth as a consequence of the success of microcredit programmes and their apparent non-commensurate empowerment, looking at two organisations (the Grameen Bank and the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee) as they operate in two localities in rural Bangladesh, in order to discover how enrichment and empowerment are often confused. The book goes on to establish that the well-publicised success stories of the microcredit programme are blown out of proportion, and that the dynamics of collective responsibility for repayment of loans by a group of women borrowers – usually seen to be a tool for the success of microcredit – is in fact no less repressive than traditional debt collectors. This book makes a contribution to development debates; challenging adherents to more closely specify those conditions under which microcredit does indeed have validity, as well as providing insights relevant to South Asian Studies and Development Studies.