The weight of institutions on women's capabilities

The objective of this paper is to assess the links between institutions and quality of life, within Nussbaum's capability framework approach, exploring a relevant empirical issue: microfinance. Microfinance appears more and more as a tool for women's empowerment. Available results of impact studies call for circumspection; microfinance can free women from certain links of dependence. But microfinance can also forge new kinds of dependence and subordination, thereby strengthening the disparities between men and women, but also among women themselves.microfinance, capabilities, institutions, Martha Nussbaum, Amartya Sen, women, empowerment

General Introduction

Microfinance continues its insane expansion. While the year 2005 has already been declared “Microcredit Year” by the United Nations, the G8 Member States have just reaffirmed the crucial importance of microfinance as a development tool. The 2004 action plan of the G8, adopted at Sea Island in June 2004, is entitled “applying the power of entrepreneurship to the eradication of poverty”. To reinforce the private sector is thus a priority, and the development of financial markets and microfinanc..

By way of a conclusion: microfinance, empowerment and solidarity-based economy

In the general introduction, we mentioned the enthusiasm aroused by microfinance. The speech delivered in September 2003 by Selvi J. Jayalalitha, then Prime Minister of Tamil Nadu, is particularly symptomatic of that enthusiasm. Thus, she said: “a silent economic revolution has taken place in rural areas of Tamil Nadu following empowerment of women with the formation of Self-Help Groups. Gone were the days of bankers’ reluctance to provide loans to the SHG members. The SHGs gave women a ‘top ..

Acknowledgements

The conference initiating this work was organized by the French Institute in January 2004, in partnership with the Laboratoire-Population-Environnement-Développment (IRD – Université de Provence). The event was supported by the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) and by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). We thank both of these institutions for their support. The realization of this book is the fruit of combined efforts. It has gone through different stages ..

Vulnérabilité et gestion des risques: potentialités et limites de la microfinance. L’exemple de l’Inde du Sud

International audienceLa microfinance est présentée comme une solution efficace contre les risques qui rendent les pauvres vulnérables : à la fois par les mécanismes d’assurance et d’épargne, et grâce au microcrédit et à la création de microentreprises qui en résulte. Mais il est nécessaire d’analyser la nature et la fréquence des risques auxquels les pauvres sont réellement soumis pour mesurer les potentiels de la microfinance

Introduction

According to the 2003 report of the Microcredit Summit Campaign, 2,572 microfinance institutions (MFIs) recorded, on a worldwide scale, more than 67 million clients with an outstanding loan. Among these clients, more than 41 million were regarded as poor people at the time of their arrival and 79 per cent, that means 33 million, were women. Many microfinance experiments carried out all over the world show that it is possible to set up financial services for the people “excluded” from traditio..

Microfinance challenges: empowerment or disempowerment of the poor?

Microfinance is often presented, not only as an efficient tool to fight against poverty, but also as a means of promoting the empowerment of the most marginalized sections of the population, especially women. However, reality has shown that the causal relation between microfinance and empowerment is neither linear, nor unequivocal and that it is even less systematic. This book is an attempt to nourish the debate, on the one hand, by combining theoretical reflections and case studies, and on the other hand, by engaging practitioners and researchers from various backgrounds (mainly economists, sociologists and anthropologists). First of all, we consider the question of definitions. Even if everyone agrees that the concept of ‘empowerment' refers to notions of choice, of power and of change, the diversity of definitions suggested here confirms that under no circumstances does a universal conception of it exist. The second part insists on the central role of the environment. The link between microfinance and empowerment is all the more subtle, and sometimes unforeseeable, as microfinance projects take place within an economic, socio-cultural and political context that is itself complex, evolutionary and which partially conditions the results obtained. Microfinance projects - as any development projects - should therefore be understood and analyzed as endogenous processes. Finally, a third part relates to the crucial question of evaluation. Here still, the diversity of the results is striking: certain experiments are very positive while elsewhere the results are very mixed and sometimes even worrying. One does not speak any more of empowerment, but of “disempowerment” or even “overempowerment”. This heterogeneity of results is due as much to the diversity of the projects, their methods of action, the target population, and the context of intervention as to the methodologies of evaluation. The conclusion leads us to go beyond a certain number of contradictions evoked throughout the book while proposing to think of empowerment using the French concept of “solidarity-based economy”. This concept of solidarity-based economy, which is theoretical as well as normative, is a framework for analysis and action, which, according to us, must make it possible to guard against the risks of failures and perverse effects mentioned throughout the book

Lève-toi et marche ! Les injonctions de l’empowerment, de la philosophie politique au storytelling

National audienc

L’empowerment: ambiguïtés théoriques et portée pratique

National audienc