Women's Micro-business Creation for Women's Empowerment or Family's Welfare? Case of Nepalese Rural Women

Micro-business creation in the less developed countries, particularly in South Asia, has been constantly promoted as a development strategy, mainly through microcredit projects. Women have been targeted by these projects as potential entrepreneurs who could contribute to household poverty reduction through business creation. Additionally, women’s empowerment and gender equality is assumed to be an eventual outcome of women’s micro-business creation. This assumption is of serious concern to gender and development advocates, and needs to be examined and analyzed through a gender lens. Analysis of the case study conducted by the author on rural Nepalese women who have been targeted by a microcredit project shows that women’s micro-business creation and the income derived from it may not necessarily bring gender-equal outcomes. The outcome of the case study shows that while families’ welfare has improved with women’s income contribution, women’s choices remain constrained by patriarchal norms and values that have a direct impact on their health and well-being. Moreover, women’s income is seen as supplementary and the ir income-earner role, although appreciated, is often underestimated. It was noticed that although in some cases women’s “agency” was enhanced as they acquired bargaining power from their income contribution, in general women’s burden has not decreased but instead has multiplied, affecting their physical and mental well-being