UMMA SALMA1
1=Lecturer, Shanto-Mariam University of Creative Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
ABSTRACT
Micro-credits have become an important tool in development economics and play an essential role to the fight against poverty, in particular with respect to the empowerment of women. Since Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank, received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2006, microcredit-systems have been increasingly conceptualized as part of a profit-oriented “financial system approach”. In this paper different approaches are discussed on micro-credits dealing with the question of how far different concepts influence societal gender arrangements and under which circumstances micro-credits are useful tools for empowerment of women in a sustainable way. For this reason, the results of an empirical study was conducted in Khulna to develop a multilayer model for the empowerment of women which shows possible impacts of micro-credits on the individual level (micro level), the community level (meso level) as well on socio-political level (macro level). In this study in phase 1 (August 2010-January 2011) seventeen women living without men were interviewed in Khulna. In phase 2 additional in-depth interviews with a selection of these women (nine) were made (May to June 2011) during February 2011 to August 2011. The selected “non-bankable” women specially in terms of economic capital, social capital, and cultural capital these women were without resources. To make them bankable, without putting them at risk of “loan bicycling” or other possible negative effects of micro credit systems, means to offer educational programs, awareness classes, knowledge on nutrition, hygiene and basics of financial management. Therefore combined programs (education and micro-credits) are tricky ways to initiate the empowerment of women and to make them “bankable”.
Keywords: Women empowerment, Micro credit, Social change and Fund for development.