Credit to CapabilitiesCredit to Capabilities focuses on the controversial topic of microcredit's impact on women's empowerment and, especially, on the neglected question of how microcredit transforms women's agency. Based on interviews with hundreds of economically and socially vulnerable women from peasant households, this book highlights the role of the associational mechanism - forming women into groups that are embedded in a vast network and providing the opportunity for face-to-face participation in group meetings - in improving women's capabilities. This book reveals the role of microcredit groups in fostering women's social capital, particularly their capacity of organizing collective action for public goods and for protecting women's welfare. It argues that, in the Indian context, microcredit groups are becoming increasingly important in rural civil societies. Throughout, the book maintains an analytical distinction between married women in male-headed households and women in female-headed households in discussing the potentials and the limitations of microcredit's social and economic impacts. |
Contents
The global trajectory of microcredit | 9 |
Agency | 36 |
Converting loans into leverage | 61 |
The power of participation | 93 |
Microcredit and collective action | 128 |
why socioreligious | 163 |
Loans and wellbeing | 202 |
Interpreting microcredit | 235 |
the future of microcredit | 252 |
Appendix | 282 |
311 | |
322 | |
Other editions - View all
Credit to Capabilities: A Sociological Study of Microcredit Groups in India Paromita Sanyal No preview available - 2016 |
Common terms and phrases
able agricultural Andhra Pradesh associational mechanism Bangladesh Bank Bibi borrow capacity collective action context cultivation domestic power domestic violence earn economic empowerment enrolled in microcredit enterprises family’s farm laborer Firdausi gain gender gram sabha Grameen Bank group leader group meetings group members group-based Hindu household husband husband’s impact improvement income India individual initial institutions interactions interest rate interventions interviews investment joining the group land lending livelihood marriage married membership men’s MFIs micro microcredit groups microcredit loans microcredit programs microfinance mobility moneylender month Muhammad Yunus Muslim women neighborhood NGOs norms organization paddy participation in microcredit patriarchal percent poor poverty repay repayment role rupees rural Saima sanctioning savings sharecropping SHGs significant social capital society Sophura started structure there’s tion took village West Bengal woman women’s agency women’s lives