Perspectives of Microcredit: A Catalyst for Women’s Empowerment in Rural Bangladesh

摘要

Women’s empowerment has become a global affair in the contemporary discourse of development and thus treated as burned by issue for the developing countries. Bangladesh is one of the densely populated countries in the world. 40% of its population lives below the poverty level of which most are rural women. This paper examined the impact of microcredit schemes on women’s empowerment in rural Bangladesh. The data was collected from 324 rural women borrowers on a field study from four villages in the district of Tangail, Bangladesh through the administration of questionnaires. This research was conducted during the period of July to December 2016. Data was also collected from women non-borrowers to compare the impact between borrowers and control-group. Data has been analyzed by SPSS software and also Logistic Regression is used to estimate the impact of empowerment of women after participating in microcredit program. A significant outcome of this research showed that microcredit has a positive impact on women’s empowerment and promotes microcredit borrowers women to participate in the household decision-making process through acquiring the self-esteem, business skills and confidence level. The results confirmed that microcredit has both significant and positive impact on women’s empowerment.