Microcredit: “A political economy of shame”

I do not doubt that individual microcredit workers mean well, and that people like Prof. Mohammed Yunus have good intentions. But microcredit has been turned into a panacea, the star of antipoverty programs around the world, to the exclusion of more responsive strategies. That’s very problematic.

The supposed success of “compassionate capitalism” strategies obscures the enormous social costs behind statistics such as amazing loan repayment rates. Social costs that are ultimately borne by women who are already marginalized by their socioeconomic and indigenous status.

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* Data from Bangladesh is from Lamia Karim, “Demystifying Credit: The Grameen Bank, NGOs, and Neoliberalism in Bangladesh,” Cultural Dynamics, Vol. 20, No. 1, 5-29 (2008)

** Data for the Philippines are from Lynn B. Milgram, “Operationalizing microfinance: Women and craftwork in Ifugao, Upland Philippines,” Human Organization, Vol. 60, No. 3 (2001)

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