This paper looks at the case for and against the view that microfinance programs benefit women in developing countries, based on a selective body of research. The analysis suggests that women constitute the largest pie of the clientele of microfinance programs at the global level. Broadly, these programs have worked withing two paradigms which aim at (1) poverty alliveation and (2) empowerpment of women within femenist discourse. However, the literature remains about the real impact of these programs In some developing countries, access to microcredit has helped many women to cross the poverty line but even when poverty has been alleviated, scepticism presits about long term and sustainable benefits of empowerment. included but not limited to, control of women over incomes through investing credit or savings, improved baragaining power and social status. This is because the commercialization of microcredit and savings services is shifting focus from the poor clients, particularly women, to all those who needs credits form formal institutions. This development is jeopardizing the objectives of proverty alliveation and empowerment of women and calls for greater attention to the needs of women in settling objectieves and design for microfinance in developing countries

The luxury-versus-necessity controversy is primarily concerned with the importance of civil and political rights vis-à-vis economic and social rights. The viewpoint of political leaders of many developing and newly industrialized countries, especially China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia is that civil and political rights are luxuries that only rich nations can afford. The United Nations, transnational civil society and the Western advanced countries oppose this viewpoint on normative and empirical grounds. While this controversy is far from over, new challenges of “evidence” and “marketization” are emerging. The first calls for a narrative on the history of civil and political rights in the West in the comparative context of the Industrial Revolution and the East Asian Miracle and China’s economic growth. The effects of the recent financial crisis and insulation of China from the Arab Spring further deepen this challenge. The marketization challenge looks at this controversy from the social exclusion angle. It argues that the basic needs covered by the minimum human rights agenda are becoming luxuries in a real sense for those who do not have the power to purchase these needs from the market.