Microfinance and Women Empowerment: A Case Study of Khushali Bank Microfinance Pakistan (original) (raw)

2020, Elementary Education Online

Empowerment of women is one of the important issues in developing countries. Women are an integral part of the society, their participation in decision making through their participation in economic activities is very low. Microfinance plays a significant role in improving women decision making through participation in economic activities. The study is an attempt to explore the socioeconomic determinants of women empowerment, focusing on the women who have availed the micro-credit. Women empowerment is measured by constructing simple index based on five indicators related to child health, education, selection of spouse of children, purchase of basic goods and decision of household savings. The results based on the primary data of District Bahawalpur show that women empowerment is considerably influenced by age, education of husband, father inherited assets, marital status, number of sons alive and amount of microfinance. The study decomposes data into two subsets showing where the loan is utilized by women themselves and where the loan is utilized by other members of the household, like husband, father or head of household. It is concluded that females using loan by themselves have better effects of microfinance on empowerment as compared to the loans utilized by other members of the household. Finally, it is concluded that microfinance as a major explanatory variable of the study has shown positive effect on empowerment of women but not as much as it was expected. It is suggested that along with provision of education and family protection the enlarged volume of microfinance and its utilization by the woman must be ensured. Microfinance institutions should strengthen and expand their support to women for their empowerment.

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