Subverting the Microfinance Myth: Gendered Livelihoods in Urban India’s Slums

• In Event: 115 - Regular Session. Development and Gender: Paradoxes, Unanticipated Effects

Abstract

This paper draws upon ethnographic work in the global microfinance industry as well as interviews with urban microfinance clients in southern India to subvert the gendered “microfinance myth” that supports the moral legitimacy of microfinance. I undermine the first part of the myth—that microfinance borrowers are “poor”—by examining the restrictive conditions under which the for-profit microfinance industry functions. These conditions make sure that microfinance institutions (MFIs) can only serve the relatively well-off who are living in slum areas of urban India, limiting or eliminating access for the poorest. The second part of the myth I undermine—that microfinance borrowers are entrepreneurial—draws from interviews with clients and MFI employees, as well as ethnographic observations of MFI home visits with potential borrowers, to argue that microfinance borrowers are rarely entrepreneurial. Finally, I address the myth that loans provide empowerment to women who are suffering under the weight of patriarchal cultures. I show that working class women served by the industry often work in close financial partnership with their husbands to enrich their livelihoods. By undermining these three myths with the nuanced accounts of working class livelihoods I encountered in fieldwork as well as the details of loan conditionalities and the everyday pressures of the industry, this paper aims to expose the moral and financial ambiguity of microfinance transactions, and insist upon more fine-grained, detailed accounts of gender and poverty in the global South.

Author

• Smitha Radhakrishnan, Wellesley College