Kawshik Baral

Micro-credit As a Means of Women Empowerment: a Study in Rural Bangladesh Kawshik Baral

This study was an attempt to understand better how microcredit facilitates empowering women. The study extensively tries to display a comparative picture regarding different dimensions of empowerment before receiving MC and after receiving MC. For this purpose a village of Batiaghata Upozila under Khulna District of Bangladesh was selected purposively as the study area. The result from the study described that before receiving MC the most of the respondents (63.3%) were housewife while, after receiving microcredit, only 5 percent were housewife while and rest of them were involved in different generating activities. Above 66 percent respondents income had been increased by receiving microcredit. After receiving MC the women started to participate in different income generating activities. Then, they also started to control over income, expenditure, credit and savings. They could then participate in household decision making more than before. Finally, it was found that in dimensions the women started to become more empowered than before before receiving MC.