Acute poverty alleviation through women’s targeting by microfinance programs

The present paper aims to adduce succinctly the reasons and arguments sustaining female-targeting microfinance programs, predominantly because of their capacity of offering an effective and operational tool against poverty. The herewith paper basically follows a double-axis organization. The first axis (embracing the 3rd and 4th part of the corpus) focuses on the benefits of microfinance, through stressing its economical and social dimensions and consequences - while contributing to enhance the holistic character of poverty reduction. With regard to the second axis (composed by the 5th part of the corpus), it emphases the potential criticisms oriented towards microfinance - thus highlighting its weaknesses - and also offering potential answers (even if only embryonically designed) for palliating them. By offering this former bi-axed structure, this essay contributes to underline the positive corollary existing between the targeting of women by microfinance programs, on the one hand, and the consequent decrease of poverty, on the other hand, hence contributing to sustain the quasi exclusive femaleoriented character of microfinance.