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Asian Social Work and Policy Review 6 (2012) 111121

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Womens Empowerment or Disempowerment


through Microfinance: Evidence from
Bangladesh
Isahaque Ali and Zulkarnain A. Hatta
School of Social Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia

Womens empowerment has been one of the declared goals of Bangladeshs national development
program, and micronance is playing a leading role in bringing about the realization of this program. Since one of the intended goals of micronance is to empower women, this concept paper
attempts to investigate the success rate does micronance truly empower or is it a case of disempowering through empowerment? The eectiveness of micronance today has been a debatable
subject in the economic and social work realms, in which it is considered a viable tool for womens
empowerment. Although there are scores of studies that demonstrate that micronance has a signicant impact on livelihood and improves the living standards of women by reducing poverty, this
paper contests those claims.
Keywords Bangladesh; micronance; poverty reduction; womens empowerment
doi:10.1111/j.1753-1411.2012.00066.x

Introduction
Womens empowerment has been one of the top priorities of development agencies and
governments around the world, including Bangladesh. International aid donors, governments, scholars, and other development experts have paid much attention to micronance as a strategy capable of reaching women and involving them in the development
process. However, womens empowerment in the development process has, up to now,
been viewed as the achievement of a better deal for women, with the concentration
mainly on womens well-being (Sen, 2000).
Bangladesh has been ranked 100th out of 128 countries in the 2007 Gender Gap
Index of the World Economic Forum. The index illustrates that labour force participation among women is 55% as compared with 88% for men, and women earn less than
half their male counterparts. The literacy rate among women is 31%; however, only 4%
of women undertake tertiary education (World Economic Forum, 2007). It has been recognized that, even in the developed countries, women continue to experience various
forms of discrimination in one form or another. In developing countries, gender disparity
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Isahaque Ali, School of Social Sciences, Universiti
Sains Malaysia, 11800, Penang, Malaysia. Email: ialisw@yahoo.com
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or low status of women has been recognized as a signicant obstacle to equality and
development (World Economic Forum, 2007).
Presently, in Bangladesh many girls are sent to attend primary school, but completing
a high school education is still a challenge for them as they are usually married o before
the age of sixteen or drop out of school due to poverty (Bhusal, 2010). Boys are comparatively privileged compared with girls, but they too are forced to leave their education
early due to severe poverty and continue wandering around big cities in search of menial
employment (Bhusal, 2010). Similar realizations have resulted in the conclusion that
unless, women are economically, socially, and politically empowered, an equal and just
society remains a distant dream.
The concept of micronance was developed by Friedrich Wilhelm Raieisen and
nationalist Jonathan Swift. Their altruistic action was motivated by a concern to assist the
poor rural population to break out of their dependence on money lenders and improve
their welfare. Their principal purpose was to provide small loans with interest for short
periods. From the 1870s, micronance institutions (MFIs) have expanded rapidly over a
large sector of the Rhine Province and other regions of the German States (Global Envision, 2006). In Bangladesh, the concept of micronance was developed in 1976 by
Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economist, as a means of alleviation poverty and
improving the lives of the very poorest inhabitants in Bangladesh (Grameen Bank, 2012).
Against that backdrop, micronance emerged as an attractive tool with the impressive claim of empowering poor women at all levels. Micronance is a small-scale loan to
poor women for income-generating activities with a view to helping them get out of poverty within their family structures. If programs wish to empower women, they should be
grounded in a clear conceptualization of empowerment, rather than assuming that
programs are empowering. As a result, it is dicult to evaluate how programs might
help some women, leave some without help, and cause harm to others (McDermott &
Garofalo, 2004).

Problem statement
Womens empowerment is conceptually complex and methodologically challenging to
measure and analyze. Measuring empowerment is not only a dicult task, but also a
recent phenomenon in the eld of social sciences. It has a very relative meaning too. The
meaning, outcomes, and goals of empowerment dier according to cultural, regional,
social, and political context. Yet, to date, neither the World Bank nor any other major
development agency has developed a rigorous method for measuring and tracking
changes in levels of empowerment. In the absence of such measures, it is dicult for the
international development community to be condent that its eorts to empower women
are succeeding (Malhotra, Schuler & Boender, 2002). It is even more worrying for
Bangladeshis to trust claims from certain quarters that micronance is succeeding in
empowering women.
The majority of empirical studies do not measure the process element of empowerment (Latif, 2001; Osmani, 2007). Additionally, macro-level studies are especially weak
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on measuring agency and often do not employ a relevant conceptual framework


(Haymanot, 2007; Kurey, 2005; Zaid, 2008). Household-level studies have made signicant progress in conceptualizing broader, context-specic frameworks and in specifying
indicators that can be said to capture aspects of agency, but considerably more work is
required in this area. The lack of empirical research at meso levels presents an important
gap, as does the relative lack of rigorous research on policy and programmatic eorts.
The scope of empowerment here encompasses social, economic, political, child health
or welfare, household well-being, womens health, and spiritual advancement among
individuals within the households as well as communities (Cheston & Kuhn, 2002). Anecdotal evidence suggests a substantive need to explore in greater depth the relationship
between micronance structures and the issues of gender in development and empowerment related to micronance (Armendiz & Roome, 2008). It is underscored that womens
empowerment is needed to increase poor peoples access to opportunity, security, and
empowerment to enable economic growth and poverty reduction in Bangladesh.

Definition of womens empowerment


There is general consensus that empowerment is a process that is manifested in more
than one dimension. The most frequently identied dimension is womens absolute wellbeing, where empowerment is seen as the process of improving the welfare of women and
girls, and is indicated by outcomes that measure current status with respect to literacy
and schooling, health and nutrition, labour force participation, contraceptive use, mobility, and ownership of clothing and assets. Another dimension is womens relative
well-being, where empowerment is seen as the process of improving the position of
women relative to men within the household, and is indicated by womens involvement
in intra-household processes such as decision-making, control over household income
and assets, and control over loans taken. The biggest organization in Bangladesh that
represents this school of thought is Proshika, which believes that empowerment of poor
women is achieved through raising their consciousness, giving them training in organizational and practical skills, supporting them with resources, and infusing them with the
condence and determination necessary for taking action to improve both their social
and economics lives (Drake & Rhyne, 2002).
The micronance institutions in Bangladesh are working for womens empowerment
in order to reduce poverty. Womens empowerment is the process by which the powerless
gain greater control over the circumstances of their lives. It means not only extrinsic control, but also a growing intrinsic capability; greater self-condence and an inner transformation of ones consciousness enable women to overcome external barriers to accessing
resources or changing traditional ideology, and monitoring and evaluating them, and
can create an environment that is conducive to womens empowerment (Batliwala, 1994).
In this study womens empowerment is dened as the achievement of expanded rights
and opportunities including education, economic self-reliance, ownership and inheritance
of property, political participation, and the elimination of all forms of gender-based discrimination, violence, abuse, harassment, and exploitation (Harriet & Sen, 2003).
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Microfinance and womens empowerment in Bangladesh


Micronance is being promoted as an entry point in the context of a wider strategy for
womens economic and sociopolitical empowerment, which focuses on gender awareness
(Kessey, 2005). In addition, access to credit is considered to be an important ingredient
of empowerment, simply because it plays a crucial role in the process of developing livelihood strategies for women given their responsibility in fullling both social and economic roles in society (Kessey, 2005). Micronance has become popular not only for its
alleged ability to combat poverty but also for its potential to empower the micronance
client, especially those clients who are women (Sugg, 2010). In addition, the study of
Haymanot (2007) indicated that participation of women in a micronance service has
had a signicant impact on their livelihoods, enhanced their household decision making,
and improved other direct and indirect outcomes related to empowerment.
According to Ahmad (2006), approximately 1000 micronance institutions and services are in existence and operational, serving 17 million active borrowers in more than
85,000 villages in Bangladesh. The largest micronance sector reaches 37% of Bangladeshi households, which is among the highest coverage in the world (Ahmad, 2006). However, the eectiveness of micronance programs is not considered to improve the living
standards of the poor Bangladeshi women. A study by Mayoux (2005) claimed that micronance does have the potential to signicantly impact the lives of women by empowering them. However, that is not an automatic consequence of womens access to savings
and credit or group formation. In many cases, benets may be marginal and women may
even be disempowered (Mayoux, 2005). Micronance is not suitable for the majority of
poor women in Bangladesh. It can empower only those wealthier women who have a
certain level of income, land, and assets and who have had no previous loans (Haque &
Yamao, 2008).
The study by Banerjee, Duo, Glennerster and Kinnan (2009) asserted that micronance for women has no impact on participants average monthly expenditure per capita,
health, education, or their decision making in India. A recent study by Shillabeer (2008)
in Bangladesh argued that micronance created indebtedness and led to poverty traps
for poor women. The study of Sugg (2010) conducted with Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) clients showed a negative correlation between ownership of
assets and length of membership with the organization. BRAC beneciaries reported that
they have to sell personal assets in order to repay their debts. In addition, in a study with
Grameen Bank clients in Bangladesh, Sugg (2010) showed that 57% of female clients
saw a rise in spousal verbal aggression since the start of their loans, and a 13% rise in
both verbal and physical violence.
A study by Anderson and Baland (2002) ascertained that the most important motive
for women to join the Rotating Savings and Credit Association (ROSCA) saving program was to keep the money away from their husbands. Thus, this nding provides evidence that husbands misuse their spouses assets, and this induces new conicts between
husbands and wives in the family. In addition, Mallick (2002) claimed that in some cases
the Grameen Bank minimizes its transaction costs by threatening women with shame,
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or using or condoning violence (both physical and verbal) as a mechanism for pressuring
women to make timely payments. MFIs prefer to lend money to wealthier women, rather
than poor women, because they can more easily repay the loans, and this helps ensure
the sustainability of the organisations. They regard poor women as too risky for micronance. Also, MFIs prefer to lend larger amounts of money because they can make a larger prot. Therefore, they discriminate against poor women by providing them with
smaller loans (Haque & Yamao, 2008; Swope, 2010).
Additionally, the study of Johnson (2004) showed that having women as a key participant in micronance programs did not mean empowerment. On the other hand, micronance had some negative impacts on the familyit increased the workload for women of
running a business and caring for children (Cheston & Kuhn, 2002). Traditionally, in
Bangladesh, women take care of their children and the household work while the men
earn income for the family. More and more women are now entering the public workforce to earn money and make their weekly repayments (Murdoch & Haley, 2002). This
creates an enormous double burden for many poor women in Bangladesh. In addition,
after getting the loan, women often give the borrowed money to their husbands, who then
spend it for their own purposes. When a wife asks her husband for the weekly loan repayment, the husband may become angry and violent to his wife. Thus, the loan creates additional mental and physical harassment for poor women since they are liable for the
weekly repayment. In addition, many children are then forced to drop out of school to
work at the family business to increase household income and reduce the familys poverty. The study by Ertel and Rao (2006) claimed that, in spite of having access to credit,
some female micronance clients did not have control over the loans contracted or the
income generated by their microenterprises. Micronance institutions may put pressure
on eld sta to achieve nancial targets and ignore their social responsibilities, such as
professional and skill development training for poor women to empower them to building capacity, control their loans, reduce poverty, and improve their living standard
(Hulme & Arun, 2011).
Although access to credit and womens empowerment are inextricably linked in much
of the international discourse on the impact of microcredit, within Bangladesh the major
policy thrust of micronance institutions has not been womens empowerment. However,
given the gender- and class-based nature of rural Bangladesh society, it is hardly surprising that the tremendous capacity of microcredit programs to reach poor women should
have important consequences for womens empowerment (Mahmud, 2002). In addition,
the focus on female borrowers has promoted the idea that micronance is a tool for gender empowerment. Finally, the claim that the act of participation in micronance programs is itself empowering produces contradictory evidence.
The study by Haque and Yamao (2008) established that the majority of micronance
clients and their households lived in unhygienic and unhealthy environments. Malnutrition and lack of knowledge pertaining to hygiene and physical illnesses were prevalent
among the clients and their households. The ndings showed that 30% of the recipients
were nancially wealthier, 81% were illiterate, about 95% lacked access to medical
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facilities due to shortage of money, 91% borrowed money from at least 2.74 micronance institutions, and 71% indicated that micronancing had no impact on their lives.
Ullah and Routray (2007) established that 73% of micronance recipients remained
below the poverty line and 74% were unemployed. It is also reported that Sua Begum,
the rst customer of Muhammad Yunus, died without food and basic needs. The rst
village named Jobra, where his micronance projects started in 1976, has the same
outlook and the level of poverty remains unchanged (Daily Amadershomoy, 2010).
Under these overt circumstances, it is vital to scrutinize the eectiveness of micronancing initiatives in womens empowerment and poverty reduction, with special
reference to Bangladesh.

Social work and womens empowerment


Empowerment has become a catchword in the eld of development, with special reference to poverty reduction and the political inclusion of marginalised groups such as
women (Kessey, 2005). Empowerment is used in the context of social work and education where there is broad agreement that empowerment is a process, that it involves some
degree of personal development, but that this is not sucient, and that it involves moving
from insight to action (Rowlands, 1997). From the social work view, empowerment
means assisting individuals, groups, or communities to enhance or restore their capacity
for social functioning, to solve their own problems and to create societal conditions
favourable to this goal. Womens empowerment is an important goal of social work.
Therefore, social workers can provide the necessary protection and empower women to
control their lives and improve their living standards (Parsloe, 1996).
Empowerment should be practised in all sectors of social work. Without empowerment, something basic is missing from social work practices (Steiner, 1975). Empowering
women involves the women themselves analyzing the sources of their problems, exploring
their needs and developing their own strategies for poverty reduction (Mayo, 2000).
In addition, the process of womens empowerment creates self-maintaining, problemsolving structures, stimulates wide interest and participation in community aairs, fosters
collaborative attitudes and practices among people, and enhances indigenous leadership
and local problem-solving capacity for poverty reduction (Rothman, 1964).
The process of womens empowerment could be directed to individuals, families,
groups, organizations, or communities, and also to dierent levels of peoples lives in
Bangladesh. Before empowering groups, communities and organizations, it is essential to
develop a practice which empowers individuals. Individuals empowerment involves
taking power over their own lives, being able to inuence each other, and bringing about
change for poverty reduction in Bangladesh (Croft & Beresford, 2000). However, an individuals empowerment is not eective without empowering groups, communities, and
organizations. Empowered groups can provide their members with a positive experience
for improving living standards. Empowering strategies oer people in communities ways
of improving their coping skills and self-condence and may give them greater control
over their lives (Adams, 2003).
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Womens empowerment is essential for poor communities and could help improve
access to resources by linking them with other groups through social movements or by
connecting them to others who can represent their interests in dierent arenas. However,
the empowerment process can be more eective for poverty reduction if it involves broad
coalitions between policy makers or government agents and active citizens (German
et al., 2008). Empowerment of women and their full participation on an equal basis in all
spheres of society, including participation in the decision-making process and access to
power, are fundamental for the achievement of equality, development, and poverty
reduction in Bangladesh (Dooren, 2007).
Womens empowerment also helps to ensure a more equitable distribution of
resources and to improve the nancial status of low-income communities (Gamble &
Weil, 1995). Community participation can empower people and oer more ownership,
and it also makes the development process more transparent and accountable (Dorsner,
2004). The concept of womens empowerment is said to have its origin in the ght against
poverty among women in poor communities (Barry & Sidaway, 1999). Therefore, participation by local people in decision making may help empower women to reduce poverty
(Hardina, 2003).
People living in poverty are generally regarded as lacking normative and other knowledge about improving living standards, including lack of family planning, inability to
plan a budget, inadequate parenting skills, and lack of interpersonal skills (Nevo, 2005).
Community social workers may help their clients tackle wider problems arising from
poverty, including unemployment, poor housing, and inadequate health-care and social
services (Adams & Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). The community social worker should
educate and inspire poor women to be enterprising, autonomous, and innovative, as individuals and communities to help reduce poverty (Jordan, 2008).
The majority of poor women in Bangladesh are illiterate and they have little knowledge about making eective changes for themselves and their families, especially poverty reduction (Encyclopaedia of Bangladesh, 2010). Hence, community social workers
could help to empowerment individual women, as well as families and communities, by
providing them with the skills they need to eect change for poverty reduction in Bangladesh.
Community social workers could organize community members to identify problems,
identify community assets, locate resources, analyse the local power structure, assess
human needs, and explore other concerns related to womens empowerment and poverty
reduction in Bangladesh (Ali & Hatta, 2010). In addition, community social workers can
also assist political parties to persuade the government and micronance policy makers
to develop new policies or reverse existing policies; they may also be able to inuence
those involved in the implementation of MFI programs, from local and international
human services institutions or organizations, to adopt new strategies to minimize the
issue of poverty in Bangladesh. The United Nations Educational, Scientic and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) suggests that the full and genuine participation of poor and
vulnerable women in poverty assessments, planning and implementation of anti-poverty
programs, as well as monitoring and evaluation of impacts of these programs help to
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improve the living standards of poor communities, especially in Bangladesh (UNESCO,


2000).

Conclusion
Micronance institutions in Bangladesh seem to assess the success of their programs
mainly in light of repayment rate and self-sustainability, whereas, the real impact on the
beneciaries is not adequately prioritized. Although long-term micronance beneciaries
enjoy slightly improved chances of social mobility and have increased feelings of selfworth, there is no signicant improvement in securing an enhanced economic base and,
at the same time, the longstanding issues of gender disparity and powerlessness remained
unchallenged. Thus, the link between minimalist micronance and womens empowerment is not as strong as it is normally perceived. It is important that micronance institutions (MFIs) promote independent academic studies and research in order to verify
anecdotal claims. In addition, it has been clearly proven that a single intervention such
as micronance cannot dramatically improve womens empowerment or lives of
women who have historically been oppressed by the traditional patriarchal society in
Bangladesh. Minimalist micronance seems to have many limitations and, thus, cannot
contribute eectively to the empowerment of poor women in Bangladesh. Like micronance beneciaries, it is important that donor agencies also recognize the deciencies of
minimalist micronance as a nancial service to the poor and not have unrealistic expectations. If micronance is to succeed and provide more productive results, it should be
accompanied by a signicant amount of skills training and educational opportunities for
poor women to help increase capacity building. In addition, integrated MFIs in cooperation with other non-government organizations (NGOs) can also promote the organization and empowerment of the poor, particularly poor women, through a combination
of awareness raising, proper training for group members, and other social services for
capacity building towards sustainable community development.
As has already been realized by some micronance practitioners, community social
workers, donor agencies and academic, alternative models of micronance are needed in
the near future to reduce poverty and increase womens empowerment. Women in
Bangladesh are facing great challenges at the family, community and state levels, ranging
from poverty, illiteracy, and irreligious patriarchy to sociopolitical exclusion. The
government should embark on a comprehensive programme for local women, focusing
on enhancing their capacity building and increasing their productivity. This would enable
them to play a vital role in increasing their own sense of empowerment. Building capacity
is about putting people at the centre of development. It is about people realizing their
potential, increasing their choices and enjoying the freedom to lead better lives. Building
capacity of women in family and communities, so they can form partnerships with local
leaders and institutions to bring about social change, has been another eective means of
empowering women and engaging them in transforming their lives. Social development
activities based on adult education, and trade-related technical and vocational training
can enhance womens income-generating activities and empower them to reduce poverty.
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Unfortunately, Bangladeshs government programs do not have enough adequately


trained personnel for eective capacity building or to assist poor women in their empowerment process. If the government sets up a separate comprehensive training or educational unit intended for the poor, there is no doubt that more productive results will be
achieved and a meaningful process of empowering the poor will begin. The focus should
be on building capacity of poor women in Bangladesh, not merely on raising the income
of the poor. Capacity building involves more than simply stimulus assistance through
micronance. This paper has presented sucient evidence to show that micronance has
fallen short of empowering the poor women of Bangladesh. The impressive claim that
micronance empowers poor women at all levels has to be categorically qualied. What
is needed is an integration of eorts comprising several fronts, such as capacity building
of women. Micronance in itself does not necessarily bring about capacity building. As
mentioned above, if programs wish to empower women, they should be grounded in a
clear conceptualization of empowerment, rather than assuming that programs are
empowering.

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