Speakers at an international conference on micro-finance Thursday attached importance to conducting more research on the role of micro-credit (MC) in empowerment of women with a greater perspective to get future direction.
There is no doubt about micro-finance playing a leading role in women empowerment. But the role needs to be defined more accurately from different aspects, they added.
These views came during different sessions of a two-day international conference, titled - Gender and Women Empowerment - organized by Institute of Microfinance (InM) at a city hotel.
The sessions on 'micro-finance and gender' and 'women empowerment and micro-credit' were chaired by Professor of London School of Economics and Political Science Naila Kabeer and Pro-Vice Chancellor (Academic) of Dhaka University Dr Nasreen Ahmad respectively.
Dr Sajeda Amin of Population Council of New York and Dr Isabelle Guerin of University of Paris presented keynote papers in the first session.
Dr Lutfun NK Osmani of Queen's University of Belfast, UK and Dr Anwara Begum of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) shared their research findings on micro-credit and women empowerment.
Among others, Dr Mustafa K Mujeri of BIDS, Professor Mahbuba Nasreen of DU, Ayesha Khanum of Bangladesh Mahila Parishad, and Dr Supriya Garikipati of University of Liverpool, UK, spoke in the conference.
Dr Mujeri said participation in the micro-credit leads to better empowerment of women in family. But greater perspective of the empowerment in land and non-land position as well as greater control on household etc need to be assessed now for better understanding of the challenges for women participation in micro-credit.
He also said women empowerment through micro-credit participation has been cleared from the perspective of economy, but it is not cleared from non-economic dimensions, like changes in values, belief etc.
"It is now necessary to scale up the amount of positive impact on women's ultimate empowerment, women rights and women position in the society," he added.
The keynote presenters and speakers focused on finding ways on forming effective groups, built with trust, to lend credit. They, however, said the motivation and possibility to act together as a group require further catalysts.
They also highlighted the issues of finding out the impacts of micro-credit on employment and mobility etc.
Dr Isabella highlighted challenges and successes of micro-credit through self-help-group, and said it helps to improve productivity, burgeoning and leadership by involving local level.
Ayesha Khanum stressed on mapping and remapping the successes of micro-credit through evaluating the issues from multidimensional approaches. She also said micro-credit's role on equal rights of women to resources needs to be understood.
Dr Anwara said standard of life has been improved, and there has also been a change in traditional men-women power relation.
smunima@yahoo.com
