ABSTRACT
Women’s community-based savings clubs were observed as early as the late 19th century across the Global South. Microfinance promised to provide financial services to the poor (predominantly women in the Global South) that lack access to formal banking. This chapter provides a synthesis of the existing evidence on the impact credit services have had. It covers two specific issues: the impact of credit on poverty and its impact on women’s empowerment. The chapter uses an analytical framework drawn from a coalescence of basic methodological principles within feminist economics scholarship described by Power as the “social provisioning approach.” Specifically, it also uses well-being as a central measure of economic success and the notion that human agency is important. From the perspective of a “social provisioning” framework, impact on income alone would give us at best a partial picture on the social efficacy of credit.
