Gender and rural microfinance: Reaching and empowering ... - IFAD

development, such outcomes may have
consequences not only for the women and
households involved, but for the effectiveness
of the intervention and the sustainability of
the institutions.
There is a need for much greater
understanding of the ways in which
different types of products and services
affect women and men from different
backgrounds and in various contexts. The
generic question ‘Does microfinance
empower women?’ is not very useful or
meaningful. The identification and
weighting of standardized SMART indicators
(specific, measurable, attainable, realistic,
timely) can be controversial because of the
complexity of empowerment itself and the
frequent trade-offs between its various
dimensions, e.g. between levels of income
earned and time available for other
activities, and between women’s autonomy
and the effort they have to put into
changing abusive relationships. Women’s
own goals and preferences vary significantly
with context and between women even
within the same context.
The main justification for in-depth
impact assessment is to improve practice,
and this requires careful attention to the
high degree of variation in financial services
and the institutions delivering them. Which
particular aspects of the products and
services or institution delivering them can
contribute to which dimension of
empowerment? In many contexts,
information is likely to be unreliable
because of the clients' incentives to alter
their responses depending on the actual or
perceived consequences of those responses
for their future access to credit. The gender
of both the respondent and interviewer
affect responses even from members of the
same household (Cloke 2001). Given the
costs of credible research and impact
assessment, it is the view of the author that
more systematic market research that
includes information on impact is the most
useful approach, though current
methodologies need to be more effectively
designed in terms of their ability to collect
qualitative and quantitative information on
empowerment, particularly the dimensions
important to clients. 19
19 For an overview of key issues in microfinance impact
assessment, see, for example, Hulme (2000). For a
discussion of empowerment frameworks and research in
Bangladesh, see Kabeer (2000). For a proposed
methodology for empowerment market research that can
also yield qualitative and quantitative information on
empowerment impact, see Mayoux (2009 forthcoming).
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