Critical dialogic accounting and accountability engagement: Exploring the micropolitics of microfinance and women’s empowerment through participatory action research

Prior accounting research highlights the neoliberal discourse that dominates development institutions’ thinking and practices, including its market-focused representations of what it means to be an “empowered woman”. Building on Tanima et al. (2020, 2023, 2024), we report on a critical dialogic accounting and accountability (CDAA) engagement, employing participatory action research (PAR) methods, aimed at establishing space for a group of poor women in Bangladesh to discuss and collectively reflect on their views about women’s empowerment and microfinance. PAR methods were used to promote discussion of neoliberal approaches to microfinance and women’s empowerment and explore alternative possibilities associated with gender and development (GAD) discourse. We illustrate how group discussions and storytelling activities informed by ideas of micropolitics, divergent discourses and a “politics of becoming” (Connolly 1995, 2011) promoted discussion and debate of patriarchal discourses and the neoliberal subject position of “rational economic woman”. Ten years on from the engagement reported here, we also reflect on the distinctive nature of CDAA engagement and how our early experiences in, and learnings from, this study have shaped our ongoing research in this area.