Rural credit programs and women's empowerment in Bangladesh

Social efficiency in microfinance institutions

“…Thanks to microcredit, women can raise their status at home and within their society (Amin et al, 1994;Panjaitan-Drioadisuryo and Cloud, 1999). Microcredit empowers women by strengthening their economic roles and increasing their contribution to their families' support (Hashemi et al, 1996); so that they can play an active role in the development process (Goetz and Gupta, 1996). The number of women borrowers is measured by the number of active borrowers who are female, as given in the Mixmarket database and directly calculated from it.…”

Microfinance and gender empowerment

“…poultry or milk cow rearing) in line with traditions stipulating that these activities are managed by women. Loans used by men and women in joint enterprises also retain the same gender structure, for example with women making puffed rice or sweet, which are then sold by their husbands (Anderson and Eswaran 2007, Hashemi et al 1996, Kabeer 1998). …”

“…Note that, in each of these cases,Ṽ i i > 0. As we have argued that the outcome of bargaining will involve an efficient level of consumption expenditures, the bargaining solution for the general case is given by the following maximisation problem: 20 We consider, first, the situation where the constraints imposed by the exit option do not bind. Then λ (k, γ, y e ) is given implicitly by the following equation:…”

“…The first is an income effect which (ignoring the denominator which, it can be shown, is always positive) is equal to y υ V h y − λV w y . If preferences can be represented by a CES utility function (of the form U i (x) = l α i l (x l ) ρ ), then it 20 Formally,V i y i e = max p.x≤y i e U i (x). 21 We use the following abbreviated notation: y υ = ∂y ∂υ ,ỹ i υ = ∂ỹ i υ ∂υ , V i y = ∂V i ∂y , and V i λ = ∂V i ∂λ .…”

The Role of Farmers and Informal Institutions in Microcredit Programs in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia

“…In particular its potential to empower women has been much discussed. Evidence remains inconclusive (see also Develtere and Huybrechts (2005)), as some authors conclude microcredit empowers women (Hashemi et al 1996;Lakwo 2006), whereas others find it produces or reproduces women's social and economic vulnerability (Ehlers and Main 1998;Goetz and Gupta 1996;Rahman 1999), and still others argue the empowerment discourse is reductionist (Parmar 2003;Selinger 2008). …”