ABSTRACT
Microcredit programs for the poor have come to occupy a central place in poverty oriented strategies in Bangladesh. Women who were able to report on the input costs for loan-funded enterprise, its product yield and its profitability, were counted as empowered. Conflicting conclusions about the impact of credit also reflect differences in the questions asked by different evaluations. By and large, the negative evaluations focused on processes of loan use while the positive ones focused on outcomes associated with, and attributed to, access to loans. The more positive evaluations, by contrast, are positive partly because they do not privilege individualized over joint forms of behavior. The household survey of male and female loanees found that while male loanees in both districts tended to be better off in terms of land owned and cultivated and education level of loanee, female loanees in Faridpur district were much better off than those in Mymmensingh.
