Gender, poverty, empowerment and the promise of microcredit in India and the United States.

This dissertation is a comparative study of the effects of microcredit on women participants in three economic development programs, two in India and one in the United States. It uses a gender and development perspective to examine if credit and the process by which credit is delivered address market issues, namely poverty, labor market segmentation and market structures that discriminate against women. It also seeks to examine the intra-household impacts of credit. The study reveals that in India, microcredit for women has become part of the mainstream development effort, while in the U.S. such programs function at the margins of the economy and public policy. With respect to empowerment, the study reveals that that it occurs at many levels, and that there is great variation between and within cases. The poverty alleviation impact in both contexts is small; women have been able to negotiate some change at the household level, but have not been able to change the gendered division of labor. In general, independent access to credit has positive impacts at the individual level, but impacts at the community or state level are functions of the nature of the credit program rather than of credit provision alone. The study reveals that contrary to the current trend towards a narrow focus on poverty alleviation alone, if the aim is to empower the women it serves, a broad-based form of intervention is essential for the credit to succeed in its mission.Ph.D.EconomicsSocial SciencesUrban planningWomen's studiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/123279/2/3068964.pd