TESTING TOOLS OF DEVELOPMENT - CREDIT PROGRAMS, LOAN INVOLVEMENT, ANDWOMENS EMPOWERMENT

The effectiveness of a credit programme at empowering women depends on the success with which it defines for itself and its workers ways to challenge, while working within, the constraints on women's empowermen t that may exist in the borrower's country. Support for this argument is found in the case of rural Bangladesh. Statistical evidence demonst rates the importance of a borrower's involvement in the labour, sellin g and accounting for the activity funded by her loan for increasing th e likelihood that credit leads to empowerment. For organizations that choose to make women's empowerment their guiding goal, borrower involv ement in the loan-funded activity is an understandable and measurable goal that has demonstrated impact on women's empowerment.