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Microcredit, Women, and Empowerment: Evidence from India

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Microcredit, Women, and Empowerment: Evidence from India MICROCREDIT, WOMEN, AND EMPOWERMENT: EVIDENCE FROM INDIA Swati Singh, B.A., MSW Dissertation Prepared for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS December 2014 APPROVED: Cynthia M. Cready, Major Professor Gabriel Ignatow, Committee Member Daniel G. Rodeheaver, Committee Member and Chair of the Department of Sociology Mark Wardell, Dean of the Toulouse Graduate School Singh, Swati. Microcredit, Women, and Empowerment: Evidence from India. Doctor of Philosophy (Sociology), December 2014, 108 pp., 9 tables, references, 158 titles. Microfinance programs, by providing financial services to economically disadvantaged individuals, generally women, are intended to help poor self-employ and become financially independent. Earlier research in India has documented both positive and negative consequences of microfinance programs on women, from financial independence to domestic abuse. However, most of the research has been geographically limited to the southern states of the country, with a matured microfinance industry, and has given little attention to how variations in cultural practices across different regions of the country may influence the impact of microfinance programs on its members. To fill the gap in the existing literature, three related studies of Indian women were conducted. The first study was a qualitative study of 35 women engaged in microfinance programs in the northern region of India. The study found that women engaged in microfinance programs reported having increased social networks, higher confidence and increased social awareness. The second and third studies used nationally representative data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3) 2005-2006. Controlling for a variety of other individual-level and community-level characteristics, the second study examined if getting a microloan affected women’s access to public spaces, and the third examined if getting such a loan influenced married women’s participation in household decision-making. Both studies further investigated if the microloan effect on these dimensions of women’s empowerment varied by the normative context of woman’s respective communities. The results indicated that, all else equal, women who had ever taken a microloan were more likely to go alone to places outside their home such as market, health clinics and places outside the community compared to women who had never taken such a loan. Getting a microloan also had a positive effect on women’s participation in decisions about large household purchases and husband’s earnings. The hypothesized moderating effect of the normative context of women’s respective communities was found only for women’s participation in decisions about large household purchases. Getting a microloan had a stronger positive effect on women’s participation in these decisions if they lived in communities with restrictive gender norms. Copyright 2014 by Swati Singh ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere thanks to my committee chair Dr. Cynthia Cready for her extensive guidance, training and encouragement throughout my dissertation. I am also deeply grateful to my committee members Dr. Gabriel Ignatow, and Dr. Daniel Rodeheaver for their support and constructive feedback. I am grateful to K. C. Ranjani, Rahul Mittra and Vaibhav Chaturvedi for their help during the field work process of the study in Chapter two. I would also extend my thanks to Dr. Michelle Poulin, Dr. Jessica Gullion and Abhimanyu Singh for their detailed suggestions that helped me improve the second chapter of the dissertation. Above all, I would thank my adorable boys, Harsh and Aditya, for being patient and supportive during the entire period of my doctoral studies and my husband Abhimanyu for his endless support and motivation. I could not have accomplished this honor without the love and support of my family. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... iii LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1 Overview of Microfinance .................................................................................................. 1 Three Related Studies ......................................................................................................... 3 Structure of the Dissertation ............................................................................................... 5 CHAPTER 2 THE EFFECTS OF MICROFINANCE PROGRAMS ON WOMEN MEMBERS IN TRADITIONAL SOCIETIES ................................................................................................... 7 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 7 Conceptual Framework ..................................................................................................... 11 Data and Methods ............................................................................................................. 16 Analysis............................................................................................................................. 19 Discussion and Conclusions ............................................................................................. 27 CHAPTER 3 MICROLOANS AND WOMEN’S FREEDOM OF PHYSICAL MOBILITY: EVIDENCE FROM INDIA .......................................................................................................... 31 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 31 Microfinance in India ........................................................................................................ 32 Conceptual Framework ..................................................................................................... 34 Women’s Mobility and Microloans .................................................................................. 36 Hypotheses ........................................................................................................................ 40 Methods............................................................................................................................. 40 Results ............................................................................................................................... 47 Discussion ......................................................................................................................... 51 iv CHAPTER 4 SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT, MICROCREDIT AND EMPOWERMENT OF INDIAN WOMEN ........................................................................................................................ 54 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 54 Empowerment of Women in Indian Society ..................................................................... 56 Microfinance and Social Development ............................................................................. 58 Data and Methods ............................................................................................................. 64 Results ............................................................................................................................... 71 Discussion ......................................................................................................................... 85 Conclusions ....................................................................................................................... 89 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION....................................................................................................... 92 Summary of Findings ........................................................................................................ 92 Limitations and Future Research ...................................................................................... 95 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 95 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................. 97 v LIST OF TABLES Page Table 2.1: Demographic Characteristics of Respondents .......................................................18 Table 2.2: Work Status and Usage of Loans by Member Respondents. .................................23 Table 3.1: Descriptive Statistics for the Variables Used in the Analysis................................46 Table 3.2: Odds Ratios from Logistic Regressions Predicting Indian Women’s Freedom to Go Alone to Markets, Health Facilities, and Places Outside the Village ..............48 Table 4.1: Descriptive Statistics for the Variables Used in the Analysis................................70 Table 4.2: Odds Ratio from Logistic Regressions Predicting Indian Women’s Participation in Decisions about their Health Care .....................................................................73 Table 4.3: Odds Ratios from Logistic Regressions Predicting Indian Women’s Participation in Decisions about Making Purchases for Daily Household Needs ......................74 Table 4.4: Odds Ratios from Logistic Regressions Predicting
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