Gender and Microfinance Performance: Why Does the Institutional Context Matter?

Slum upgrading with community-managed microfinance: Towards progressive planning in Indonesia

“…Collective lending, without collateral, to a peer group e an innovation of microfinance institutions (MFIs) e reduces default risk through joint liability and transparency (Armend ariz de Aghion & Morduch, 2000;Morduch, 1999). Extending credit exclusively to women is arguably more empowering (Kabeer, 2001) and women's participation improves MFI performance (Boehe & Barin Cruz, 2013). Yet, high-interest rates 2 and lower marginal returns (Weiss & Montgomery, 2005); exclusion from peer-groups (Datta, 2004); and mission drift and/or loan creep (Armend ariz & Szafarz, 2011;Woller, 2002) prevent microfinance from reaching the core poor.…”

“Low Profile” or Entrepreneurial? Gender, Class, and Cultural Adaptation in the Global Microfinance Industry

“…In the microfinance literature, recent studies acknowledge the complexity of the microfinance industry, highlighting the importance of loan officers (Kar, 2013;Sagamba, Shchetinin, & Yusupov, 2013), the local and global institutions involved in the microfinance transaction (Aitken, 2013;Boehe & Cruz, 2013;Haile, Bock, & Folmer, 2012), and the presence of other intermediaries, such as training or business development programs (Epstein & Yuthas, 2013;Sievers & Vandenberg, 2007;Swain & Varghese, 2013). Other studies revisit the premise that women are the best targets for microfinance, aiming sometimes to critique this premise, and sometimes to underscore it (D'Espallier, Guérin, & Mersland, 2011;Maclean, 2013;Moodie, 2013;Swamy, 2014) Yet, we have few clues about how the divergent motivations of stakeholders play out within microfinance organizations invested in particular gendered discourses.…”

Women Leaders and Social Performance: Evidence from Financial Cooperatives in Senegal

“…Typically, the literature examines the influences of the two groups of female leaders separately. Scrutinizing their interactions, we acknowledge that gendered action is partly shaped by institutional constraints and hierarchies (Razavi, 1997;Boehe and Cruz, 2013;Goldman and Little, 2015), and by gender inequality in social institutions (Teasdale et al, 2011;Branisa, et al, 2013).…”