Empowering rural communities: Extrapolations from a systematic review of microfinance-led outcomes

This study tries to investigate impact of microfinance-led interventions on rural women and local communities based on systematic literature review. The microfinance model started as a developmental initiative keeping women as an agency for social change and center of policy implementation. In rural communities, women play significant role in the house and outside, but they are highly marginalized on the face of existing structural discrimination and disempowerment. It forced government and non-government organizations to introduce developmental interventions such as microfinance-based programmes for the poor communities. The results of systematic literature review indicate a gradual socio-economic-cultural-political change among women, household, and the local community. However, it also suggests that microfinance intervention met with mixed results in making desired socio-economic change. The study demonstrates that the microfinance interventions empower women and reduces societal inequalities but failed to make the requisite transformation in the local community and in some cases made it worse.