IMPACT OF MICROFINANCE ON WOMEN EMPOWERMENT IN SOME SELECTED AREAS OF LUXMIPUR DISTRICT

Abstract

The aim of this thesis to understand the impact of microfinance on women empowerment. As they are the half in number of our total population. Without their empowerment, we can‟t think the ultimate development of our society as well as our country. The impact of microfinance on women‟s empowerment remains debated. While some studies suggest that microfinance helps women increase their income earning abilities,leading to greater power within the household, others argue that men often take control over the credit and income which was allocated to women, leading to a more vulnerable position within the household for women. This paper evaluates the impact of microfinance on women‟s empowerment in rural Bangladesh. The data were collected via a questionnaire that was conducted on a field study in the district of Luxmipure in Bangladesh. Only primary data were collected for this study. The survey method was followed for data collection. SPSS software was used to analyzed the collected data. Furthermore, the impact of microfinance on women‟s empowerment is examined through women empowerment index (WEI), which describes us the status of women empowerment through different descriptive statistics. From the study we can find that the women empowerment index of all respondents is 3.47 which is moderate value of index, the value describe still in our rual area women don‟t have that much power of making decision about economic, social and political isuues. Women can take loan from various government and non government organization but most of the time they are not the real user of that money. Their husband or son take all the decision about use of loan. On the other hand if they use the loan for their business they can‟t save money without husband‟s concern. So we need more awear about women empowerment activities. Now, if we tell about the microfinancing institution, they also have huge problem specially for women such as high rate of interest, lack of desirable loan, lace of easy process of loan, lack of digital payment system, weekly installment etc. The study also recommends some policy to solve these problems. Both government and responsible authorities also need to work together to make the processes easy and secure.