TESTING TOOLS OF DEVELOPMENT - CREDIT PROGRAMS, LOAN INVOLVEMENT, AND WOMENS EMPOWERMENT

The effectiveness of a credit programme at empowering women depends on the success with which it defines for itself and its workers ways to challenge, while working within, the constraints on women's empowerment that may exist in the borrower's country. Support for this argument is found in the case of rural Bangladesh. Statistical evidence demonstrates the importance of a borrower's involvement in the labour, selling and accounting for the activity funded by her loan for increasing the likelihood that credit leads to empowerment. For organizations that choose to make women's empowerment their guiding goal, borrower involvement in the loan-funded activity is an understandable and measurable goal that has demonstrated impact on women's empowerment.