Title: Micro Finance and Women Empowerment – A Comparative Study between Kerala and Chittagong
Abstract: ABSTRACT
Micro finance, a proven tool for empowering poor women by mitigating their extreme poverty, has brought great changes in the women’s living standard. As an alternative source of credit for the poor, micro finance has successfully established the thought that poor need credit. From its basic criteria to provide small amount of loan to the poor women to implement a number of social development programmes, micro finance is now considered as the tool of women empowerment. The easy access to get loans without collateral helps rural poor, especially women to enter into the income generating activities that has established them as self-dependent human being in the society.
The present study evaluates the impact of the micro finance on the empowerment level of its women beneficiaries in Kerala (India) and Chittagong (Bagladesh) with regard to the economic, psychological, social empowerment and social consciousness and aspirations. The study reveals that micro finance has a great influence over its beneficiaries from economic conditions to psychological, social empowerment and social consciousness and aspirations. Especially, the beneficiaries in Chittagong who had very low level empowerment in all aspects during pre-micro finance period, a good number of them have achieved empowerment in the post micro finance period. In respect of post micro finance impact, the highest number of beneficiaries in Kerala has achieved the empowerment. But when pre and post micro finance improvement (relative increase) is concerned, the beneficiaries in Chittagong have achieved more than what the beneficiaries in Kerala have achieved.
Publication Year: 2015
Publication Date: 2015-11-30
Language: en
Type: article
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