Book Description
More than 65 million poor people have accessed microcredit schemes and about three quarters of them are women. This paper addresses the challenging issue of whether the microcredit programmes are tools for empowering poor women. For this purpose the problem is identified as -- to what extent micro credit influences empowering poor women in rural areas. The prime objective of the research is to identify the role of the micro-credit programmes in empowering women in Jaffna region under post-war development. It was assumed that higher the level of micro credit positively correlated with empowering poor women. For this purpose, the households who are getting loans for health nutrition, poverty alleviation and self employment from micro finance institutions ie, CRBs, TCCSs, and Samurdhi Banks from Jaffna region are selected to meet the research objectives. In Jaffna, there are 29,000 female-headed households out of the total of 100 000 women affected by war in the district of Jaffna. In a postwar economy, a country like Sri Lanka will need to address multifaceted socioeconomic issues in respect of women affected by war. From more than 1,000 households, 10% of sample ie 150 women headed families in Jaffna region are used to survey the results. The information has been gathered by using primary data using questionnaires and secondary data which was the reports, documents and statistical surveys. To find out the association and impact among the variables the correlation and regression analysis tools have been used by using SPSS software package. However, there is positive correlation between micro credit and women empowerment and an impact of microcredit on women empowerment, finally, it is concluded that there is need to complement credit-delivery with social awareness raising, building confidence and self-esteem among women. Microcredit, thus, is not sufficient in the process of empowering income poor women, but it is of the very important ingredients in that process.