This article examines the complexity and diversity of women?s informal financial practices and circuits using data from surveys conducted in Senegal and South India. An analysis of individual experiences reveals the subtlety and complexity of these practices and circuits: apart from economical...

</titre> <alinea/> Access to credit for small farmers is a major challenge in securing or even increase agricultural production. That this access is either difficult or impossible for farmers in developing countries. Yet the majority of peasants in developing countries are still excluded from the banking system....

The unequal treatment of children is not gender neutral from the parent side. Our results show that women try to compensate through debt for the unbalanced situation faced by their daughters compared to their sons. However, the lack of symmetry between mothers' and fathers' financial situations...

There is now an increasing consensus that the effects of microfinance on self-employment are limited, with two common interpretations. The microeconomic approach suggests that the poor lack the skills, the resources and the motivation to start their own business. The macroeconomic approach...

Poor women have complex financial lives. They borrow from a variety of sources. So far, however, research has focussed only on formal borrowing as a source of women’s empowerment. This study examines whether type of borrowing matters to women. We differentiate between ‘easy loans’ – that...

This micro-level study combines multivariate and qualitative analyses to highlight the fragmented nature of debt in southern Indian rural households. It finds that debt is socially regulated in the sense that social interactions shape the cost, use and access to debt. Caste, social class and...

In the microfinance industry, "empowerment" is often described as a means to facilitate female emancipation from male domination. This paper draws on women's testimonies to highlight the fundamental importance of women's relationships with one another in this process. Women continuously...

This paper analyzes microcredit demand and use to draw lessons on how households appropriate microcredit services. It introduces qualitative analysis to a randomized study. Findings suggest that microcredit demand and use is shaped not only by agro-ecological conditions, but by two major...

<italic>Moroccan policies against sub-standard housing give priority to the eradication of shantytowns. News schemes mix different actors and are based on “participatory approaches”. In rehousing projects, participatory combines social support (expected to help the implication of slum dwellers in...</italic>