Gender EqualityReiko Fukushima

Women

social & economic mobility

+ lack of physical collateral

access to financial services men

difficulty to be active in the labor market

microcredit

promote self-employed

& increase women’s opinion

Women in Arab• Seeking to enter Parliament a history of high cultural hurdles + Islamist & tribal lobbies• Government - realize the importance of women’s status e.g. promoting female equality & a literacy rate / school enrollment problem : not the law but it’s culture women want men to rule e.g. 7 of the 22 Arab states

Women in Bangladesh Garment industry provide employment opportunities (in 1990: 28%→in 2002 85%) socio-economic transformation · marriage rate/age · population · economic independent · literacy rates factory conditions are unsafe and wages low

• a leader of low-income countries offering microcredit

* three well-known programs

- the Grameen Bank

- Bangladeesh Rural Advancement 　 Committee (BRAC)

- Bangladesh Rural Development Boards’s Rural Development Project (RD-12)

What is Microcredit?

• Very small loan with low interest rate

- to the unemployed

& poor entrepreneurs

& others living in poverty

= whoever not considered as bankable

esp. women

Effects of Microcredit• Raise living standards

= generate income• Alleviate poverty

increasingly gaining credibility

e.g. the U.N. & Muhammad Yunus

a panacea for reducing poverty or reaching poor women

Impacts• Impact of credit given to women men borrowing by women - improve children’s welfare nutritious wellbeing human capital by men - household net worth = physical capital household reproductive behavior - have more children

Microcredit = more attractive to women than to 　

men

　　　 high rate of women membership

　　　 : ave. 84%

Sources

• Using microcredit to advance women, (Nov. 1998), Retrieved The World Bank, Prem notes from: www1.worldbank.org/prem/PREMNotes/premnote8.pdf

• Microcredit, (n.d.), Retrieved from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcredit