ABSTRACT
Since the 1970s, the gender and development movement has put gender issues on the table. We have moved from patronizing welfare models of development to understanding that involving women in designing initiatives from the outset is integral to achieving the most fruitful outcomes. Yet, the fact that social institutions and development organizations continue to produce gendered outcomes which can be constraining or disadvantageous for women means that it can be useful to adopt a feminist perspective to examine the relationship between the institutional claim to empowerment and the capacity of program design and practice to generate social opportunity for women (see Goetz 1997). Such an approach raises questions about how theories of power underlying the concept of empowerment are currently being used in development practice. To generate debate around these issues, this chapter analyzes a new (1997) microfinance development program in the northern upland Philippines established by the Central Cordillera Agricultural Programme or CECAP.2 CECAP’s Rural Finance System is developing a local system of village savings and loan groups and connecting these to local banking cooperatives to promote economic development.
