Poor women have complex financial lives. They borrow from a variety of sources. So far, however, research has focussed only on formal borrowing as a source of women’s empowerment. This study examines whether type of borrowing matters to women. We differentiate between ‘easy loans’ – that...

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...

Evaluation studies routinely find that lending to women benefits their households, they are however vastly divergent in their conclusions regarding its empowering potential. This paper investigates this paradoxical suggestion by examining a case study. Survey data from two drought prone villages...