Microcredit, Poverty, and Empowerment: Exploring the Connections
This chapter examines the assumed link between microcredit, poverty alleviation and empowerment, by seeking answers to two sets of questions. First, does microcredit help to alleviate poverty; second, what impact does such credit have on participants' lives. To explore these questions, the chapter compares two microcredit programs in Chennai, India, that draw participants from the same pool - poor women living in the "slums" of Chennai. The chapter reviews some of the challenges in conceptualizing and measuring poverty and empowerment, as well as the implications of these challenges for microcredit provision. It describes the study's methodology, and introduces the programs and participants. The chapter focuses on Working Women's Forum (WWF) and Guild of Service-PLAN (GOS-PLAN), and their impacts. The impacts are divided into two broad categories: the first includes impacts clearly related to poverty; the second includes impacts related to empowerment at the individual, household, market, and community levels. Keywords:community; empowerment; market; microcredit; poverty alleviation; women