From Margin To Mainstream: Microfinance, Women's Work And Social Change In The Philippines
Since the 1990s, microfinance has become the leading development strategy adopted by NGOs and government agencies for supporting microenterprise projects that can alleviate poverty and empower participants, especially women. Views differ, however, on whether microfinance addresses the symptoms or the social causes of poverty. This paper engages these debates by analyzing the microfinance program established by the Center for Women's Enterprise Development (CWED) in Laguna province, southern Luzon, Philippines. I argue that increased access to credit, the current focus of CWED' s program, does not transform the social and economic infrastructure within which women work and live and thus falls short of institutional claims to empower beneficiaries and improve their quality of life. I suggest that the extent to which microfinance develops transformatory initiatives to meet women's real needs depends on how programs enfold social change objectives beyond credit and enable political advocacy for individual and collective action.