Phd proposal Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3500 words

Phd proposal - Essay ExampleAdditionally, the proliferation of group-based delivery schemes has supported the view that arbitrary impacts have redounded in the lives of women individually as closely as collectively, as a result of the approach competency of micro-credit facilities. In this regard, empowerment was more commonly measured in terms of eight indicators womens stinting contribution to the household income mobility, or the ability of women to travel without escort ability to make small purchases ability to make large purchases ownership of productive assets involvement in the formulation of major decisions freedom from family control and political awareness (Hashemi, et al., 1996). On the matter of impacts, Chen (1997) was among the first to use this framework to arrive at three pathways to empowerment that micro-credit programmes are found to produce among its clientele. The three pathways are identified as the cognitive, the perceptual, and the comparative impacts. T he cognitive impact determines the distance by which the participants skills and knowledge have improved due to their participation in the programme. Among these are the knowledge of how to save, to plan for the future, and to take greater control of personal and household finances. Also include are learning how to bevel money, learning of the virtues of industry and hard work, discipline and strong-mindedness money management and bank rolling profits and small business dynamics of learning how to take advantage of seasonality, of diversification, and quick gunstock turnover. The second is perceptual impact, which revolves around how women see themselves. Included here are womens self-confidence, self-reliance, and self-esteem, as well as their changing vision of their future as a result thereof. Finally, the third pathway is the relational impact, or the manner the programme has changed the participants with regard to their family relationships (Johnson, 2005). Primary among thes e relationships is the participants relationship with their husbands. There are two diverging pathways. One is the husbands initial suspicion about the wifes comings and goings, which is later replaced by an appreciative acknowledgement of her new abilities, a higher level of respect accorded her, and their appreciation for the womans contribution to the household income. There have been cases, however, depending on the culture in which the couple are embedded, of husbands expressing pettishness against their wives for spending too much time away from their household duties (Johnson, 2005). Criticisms The claim that micro credit provides economic empowerment has been criticized for the narrow construction it ascribes to empowerment. The focus on micro credit programs tends to misleadingly circumscribe womens empowerment to their economic adequacy this tends to simplify the issue of transformational empowerment, and relegating womens subordinate role to a matter of economic mainstr eaming. For instance, Stephen Lewis decried the mainstreaming of gender issues in the UN system, because of fragmentation and dispersal of efforts among several agencies which are under funded and maligned (Goetz & Sandler, 2007). Mainstreaming indicates that integrating is being intended, rather than the creation of entities specifically advocating solutions to the plight of women. It tends to