IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ulb/ulbeco/2013-239880.html

The Cost of Empowerment: Multiple Sources of Women’s Debt in Rural India

Author

Listed:
  • Supriya Garikipati
  • Isabelle Agier
  • Isabelle Guérin
  • Ariane Szafarz

Abstract

Poor women borrow from multiple sources. This study examines whether the source of debt matters for women’s role in household financial decisions. Drawing on a household survey from rural Tamil Nadu, we categorise women’s loans along the lines of accessibility and formality into ‘planned loans’ and ‘instant loans’. We find that ‘instant loans’ support women’s bargaining power in various types of household financial decisions, whereas ‘planned loans’ have no impact. This surprising result is better understood when the nature of ‘instant loans’ is examined – these are frequently usurious, involve coercive enforcement methods and are considered socially debasing. Hence women who use them perform a convenient role for their households and in return gain some negotiating power.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Supriya Garikipati & Isabelle Agier & Isabelle Guérin & Ariane Szafarz, 2016. "The Cost of Empowerment: Multiple Sources of Women’s Debt in Rural India," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/239880, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    • Handle: RePEc:ulb:ulbeco:2013/239880
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Isabelle Guérin, 2014. "Juggling with debt, social ties, and values the everyday use of microcredit in rural South India," Post-Print ird-01471734, HAL.
    2. Isabelle Guérin & Bert D'Espallier & G. Venkatasubramanian, 2015. "The Social Regulation of Markets: Why Microcredit Fails to Promote Jobs in Rural South India," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 46(6), pages 1277-1301, November.
    3. Elena Reboul & Isabelle Guérin & Antony Raj & G. Venkatasubramanian, 2019. "Managing Economic Volatility. A Gender Perspective," Working Papers CEB 19-015, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    4. Isabelle Guérin, 2018. "Pour une socioéconomie de la dette," Post-Print ird-02196925, HAL.
    5. Friedson-Ridenour, Sophia & Pierotti, Rachael S., 2019. "Competing priorities: Women’s microenterprises and household relationships," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 53-62.
    6. Huis, Marloes & Lensink, Robert & Vu, Nhung & Hansen, Nina, 2019. "Impacts of the Gender and Entrepreneurship Together Ahead (GET Ahead) training on empowerment of female microfinance borrowers in Northern Vietnam," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 46-61.
    7. Isabelle Guérin & Youna Lanos & Sébastien Michiels & Christophe Jalil Nordman & Govindan Venkatasubramanian, 2017. "Demonetisation, Social Networks and Social Protection: Insights from Rural Tamil Nadu," Working Papers DT/2017/10, DIAL (Développement, Institutions et Mondialisation).
    8. Juan Sebastian Cubillos-Rocha & Juliana Gamboa-Arbelaez & Luis Fernando Melo-Velandia & Sara Restrepo-Tamayo & Maria Jose Roa-Garcia & Mauricio Villamizar-Villegas, 2021. "Effects of interest rate caps on credit access," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 60(2), pages 117-139, December.
    9. Isabelle Guérin & Christophe Nordman & Elena Reboul, 2019. "The gender of debt and the financialisation of development. Insights from rural southern India," Working Papers CEB 19-016, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    10. Carolina Laureti, 2017. "Why do Poor People Co-hold Debt and Liquid Savings?," Working Papers CEB 17-007, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    11. Ameen, Nisreen & Shah, Mahmood Hussain & Sims, Julian & Choudrie, Jyoti & Willis, Robert, 2020. "Are there peas in a pod when considering mobile phone and mobile applications use: A quantitative study," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    12. Singh, Vanita & Babbar, Karan, 2022. "Empowered but abused? A moderated mediation analysis to explore the relationship between wife's relative resources, relational empowerment and physical abuse," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 296(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G24 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Investment Banking; Venture Capital; Brokerage
    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship
    • O16 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Financial Markets; Saving and Capital Investment; Corporate Finance and Governance
    • M13 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - New Firms; Startups

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ulb:ulbeco:2013/239880. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Benoit Pauwels (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecsulbe.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.