Agency, empowerment and intra-household gender relations in Bangladesh: Does market-oriented microcredit contribute?

This article seeks to probe the influence of microcredit on the development of agency and empowerment of poor women in rural Bangladesh. The study was conducted on the clients of two leading NGOs-Grameen Bank (GB) and Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC)-in Bangladesh. The qualitative findings of the ethnographic study confirmed that poor women's involvement in microcredit programs does not contribute to the development of their agency and empowerment in a transformative sense due to structural problems in the programs and the patriarchal social structure of Bangladesh. It is true that microcredit has increased the mobility of women through group networks and organizations, but it has not added to their broader empowerment by easing their access to market transactions, unlike their male counterparts. An overwhelming majority of women do not have control over loans and credit-driven activities, although repayment responsibility rests entirely with them. In some instances, microcredit leads to spousal conflicts regarding repayments. Therefore, microcredit has not been very effective in promoting rational economic choices by women that would lead to their empowerment in the true sense of the term.