Credit to Capabilities

Credit to Capabilities focuses on the controversial topic of microcredits impact on womens empowerment and especially on the neglected question of how microcredit transforms womens agency. Based on interviews with hundreds of economically and socially vulnerable women from peasant households this book highlights the role of the associational mechanism - forming women into groups that are embedded in a vast network and providing the opportunity for face-to-face participation in group meetings - in improving womens capabilities. This book reveals the role of microcredit groups in fostering womens social capital particularly their capacity of organizing collective action for public goods and for protecting womens welfare. It argues that in the Indian context microcredit groups are becoming increasingly important in rural civil societies. Throughout the book maintains an analytical distinction between married women in male-headed households and women in female-headed households in discussing the potentials and the limitations of microcredits social and economic impacts.