Microcredit and women's empowerment : a case study of Bangladesh / Aminul Faraizi, Taskinur Rahman and Jim McAllister.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [131]-138) and index.

Machine generated contents note: 1. The empowerment project -- 2. Microcredit as an empowerment strategy -- 3. Unpacking microcredit discourses -- 4. Implanting microcredit: BRAC and Grameen Bank officers -- 5. Envisioning microcredit -- 6. The false promise: microcredit and empowering poor women in rural Bangladesh.

Using the case study of Bangladesh and based on a long term participatory observation method, this book investigates the claims of the success of microcredit, as well as the critiques of it in the context of women's empowerment. It confronts the distinction between women's increasing wealth as a consequence of the success of microcredit programmes and their apparent not-commensurate empowerment, and looks at two organisations operating in two localities in rural Bangladesh in order to discover how these concepts are often confused. The book goes on to establish that the success stories of the microcredit programme are blown out of proportion, and that the dynamics of collective responsibility for repayment of loans by a group of women borrowers - usually seen to be a tool for success of microcredit - is in fact no less repressive than traditional debt collectors. It is a worthwhile contribution to development debates, challenging adherents to more closely specify those conditions under which microcredit does indeed have validity, as well as providing useful research for South Asian Studies and Development Studies.