Measuring the Impact of Microfinance on Women Empowerment: A Cross Country Analysis with Special Reference to India

The outreach of microfinance program is considered to be a means to enhance the economic opportunities among the women section of the population and thus have its far reaching implications to the empowerment of women. In this respect, a wide variation in the outreach of microfinance program to the women poor households is observed across countries of the world. In India, the states having higher level of microfinance outreach are also the states with a relatively high level of women empowerment. It is, thus, predicted that an all-inclusive microfinance system would strengthen the process of financial inclusion in India and thereby would promote women’s empowerment.