Making Women Pay

In Making Women Pay, Smitha Radhakrishnan explores India's microfinance industry, which in the past two decades has come to saturate the everyday lives of women in the name of state-led efforts to promote financial inclusion and women's empowerment. Despite this favorable language, Radhakrishnan argues, microfinance in India does not provide a market-oriented development intervention, even though it may appear to help women borrowers. Rather, this commercial industry seeks to extract the maximum value from its customers through exploitative relationships that benefit especially class-privileged men. Through ethnography, interviews, and historical analysis, Radhakrishnan demonstrates how the unpaid and underpaid labor of marginalized women borrowers ensures both profitability and symbolic legitimacy for microfinance institutions, their employees, and their leaders. In doing so, she centralizes gender in the study of microfinance, reveals why most microfinance programs target women, and explores the exploitative implications of this targeting.

Impact of Microcredit on Women Empowerment: A Case Study in the Context of Chattogram District, Bangladesh

The microcredit sector in Bangladesh has flourished over the past few years by providing financial services to poor women who were previously unreachable, and it has been successful in meeting their fundamental needs, empowering them. This paper is an attempt to find out the role of microcredit on the empowerment of women borrowers in the context of some regions of the Chattogram district. These three Upazillas were surveyed cross-sectionally. A well-structured questionnaire was used to collect data during face-to-face interviews with 50 microcredit women borrowers and 50 non-borrowers from two major microcredit providers in Bangladesh. Participants were randomly selected. Data were summarized in tabular form. As a result of the chi-square test and ANOVA, significant results were observed. The paper analyzes the role of microcredit in women's empowerment from three perspectives: psychological, social, and economic. As a result of the study, BRAC and ASA microcredit have a significant role in reducing the vulnerability of poor women in the study region by generating income, improving the living standards of borrowers, and enabling these women to become more empowered by: (a) psychological empowerment by acquiring decision-making power in household activities, (b) economic empowerment by making a contribution to living standard & control over assets, (c) social empowerment by getting freedom of voice and mobility.

Financial Performance of Micro-Finance Institutions in India

Micro-finance institutions (MFIs) in most developing countries, including India, are seen as essential tools to eradicate poverty and raise the standard of living of rural poor. Therefore, the sound functioning of MFIs has a huge long-run impact on the outreach of the rural poor. However, the performance of MFIs is often measured in terms of their social impact on the rural poor, while the financial indicators are ignored. In this context, the study analysed the major determinants of the financial performance of the 20 MFIs in India using panel regression. The results of the study revealed that financial indicators such as operating self-sufficiency, return on assets, and size (assets of the MFIs) had a positive impact on increasing the performance of MFIs. Further, the active borrowers increase efficiency, while passive borrowers had a negative impact on the performance of the MFIs. Similarly, a low level of debt to equity ratio, operating expenses to assets ratio, and low percentage of women borrowers could lead to the sound financial performance of MFIs. Keywords: Active borrowers, financial performance, micro-finance, women borrowers. JEL Codes: G21, I 22

Impact of Microcredit on Rural Poverty Alleviation in the Context of Bangladesh

Microcredit and poverty alleviation have become the two sides of a coin as the role of microcredit on poverty alleviation is well accepted in the arena of economic development. This study is an attempt to analyse the impact of microcredit on poverty alleviation in the rural areas namely Hathazari, Mirsharai and Sitakunda upazilla (sub-units of district ) of Chittagong district, Bangladesh. A cross sectional survey was conducted on the rural part of these three upazillas. Data have been collected through a well-structured questionnaire from 100 microcredit-recipients/borrowers of Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) and Association for Social Advancement (ASA) - two giant microcredit providers in Bangladesh and from 50 non-borrowers of the study areas. Respondents were selected randomly. Tabular method was used to describe the data. Hypothetically, the outcomes were found significant resulted from chi-square test (X ² -test) and ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) without an exception for clothing expenditure. The study revealed that microcredit disbursed through BRAC and ASA, plays a dynamic role to reduce poverty in the study areas by income generating activities of the poor women borrowers and by improving their living standard. It is found from the study that microcredit has  positive impact on income, expenditure, condition of dwelling house, education, health and decision making ability of the poor women borrowers who spent at least five years in BRAC and ASA comparing to the non-borrowers.

Does Microfinance Matter for Women Borrowers? Recent Findings from Bangladesh

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.

Microfinance and Women Empowerment: An Empirical Analysis

The present chapter empirically examines the role of microfinance access on women empowerment by using primary data on women borrowers from different microfinance institutions in Nadia and Murshidabad districts of West Bengal in India. Microfinance institutions play an important role in strategies related to gender and development due to their active relationships with women empowerment and poverty alleviation. The various programmes under microfinance like self-help groups (SHGs) are promoted and inspired for their significant economic impacts on empowerment of women. We investigate the impact of microfinance access on three dimensions of women empowerment, which make influence upon decision making on the issues of credit, expenditure and children. We conduct a primary survey on about eight hundred respondents of women borrowers from different microfinance institutions and apply multivariate probit estimation. Our findings imply that the greater access to microfinance credit negatively impacts on economic empowerment i.e. decisions on credit and expenditure related issues.

Does lending to women lower sustainability of microfinance institutions? Moderating role of national cultures

Purpose This study aims to investigate whether lending to women decreases sustainability of microfinance institutions (MFIs) and how regional characteristics where MFIs are located moderate this effect. Design/methodology/approach Financial and operating data of MFIs and national cultures are available from the MIX Market database and the Hofstede’s publications. These data are analyzed by using multiple regression models with the financial self-sustainability, proportion of women borrowers in the MFI’s lending portfolio, and dimensions of national culture as dependent, explanatory and moderating variables. Findings Lending to women tends to reduce sustainability of MFIs. This negative effect is more pronounced in countries ranking higher on power distance and individualism, but the effect is less serious in countries ranking higher on masculinity and uncertainty avoidance. Originality/value Many studies demonstrate that MFIs improve their repayment rates by targeting women borrowers. The increase in repayment rates, however, may not always improve their sustainability. Further, as microfinance industry increasingly diversifies geographically, regional characteristics where MFIs are located play a vital contingent role in their sustainability.