ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the disbursement of loans by the Grameen Bank in women’s centers, the uses of these loans in the household economy of the borrowers, and the structure of loan repayment in the study village. It presents the gulf between the bank’s vision of lending to women and the practices of informants in the study village. The chapter also discusses the practices of loan disbursement, loan use, and the loan recovery process. House loans are approved for individual borrowers through the Housing Project and administrated by local branches of the Grameen Bank. Cattle sharecopping and leasing are two types of new loans introduced in the study branch in 1996. The group fund is primarily an accumulation of the “group loan tax,” the 5 percent deducted from the proceeds of every loan approved for individual borrowers and deposited in a joint group fund account with the bank.
