Reconsidering Women’s Empowerment: the Contradictory Effects of Microfinance for Guatemalan Women

This article critiques the metric of “empowerment” as a singular way to classify whether development projects for women have been successful. The article focuses on how microfinance has both empowered and disempowered Guatemalan women in relation to other members of their communities. It finds that microfinance can increase the agency of women in Guatemala as consumers, but can also subject women to economic power structures that are patriarchal, depending on how microfinance projects are deployed. The authors focused on Guatemala, but make reference to how their analysis reflects wider patterns in the Global South. The article’s research was conducted from 2007-2014, with 20 months of field research conducted between 2009-2010.