ABSTRACT
Microfinance provides small loans and other small-scale financial services—such as savings accounts and insurance—to individuals lacking collateral, credit history, and/or documentation establishing or verifying identity, such as a birth certificate or government identification card. This chapter examines the impact of microfinance in the lives of Pakistani women, with particular attention to the historical, cultural, and social contexts that shape its utilization as a strategy for poverty alleviation, female empowerment, and Pakistan's national economic growth. Microfinance is only effective in empowering women and positively transforming their lives and their societies if the external environment is conducive to female empowerment. Social and cultural conditions must allow women to be independent, economically autonomous, physically and socially mobile, and to act as entrepreneurs in order for empowerment to flourish. Certain analyses suggest that Pakistani women experience the promises and pitfalls of microfinance unevenly, especially in regard to its primary goals of poverty reduction, financial sustainability, and empowerment.
