Revolution, Interrupted: Gender and Microfinance in Nicaragua

Abstract

Now reaching over 100 million families, the burgeoning microcredit movement has come to play a dominant role in the international development agenda. This is especially true in Nicaragua, where microcredit has supplanted the Sandinistas’ more radical approaches to poverty alleviation and women’s empowerment. Survey and focus group data from borrowers with seven prominent Nicaraguan microfinance institutions show that women benefit less than men from microcredit because they get smaller loans and they invest those loans in less lucrative businesses. Also, these women are constrained by household responsibilities. These findings call into question neoliberal notions that market forces can solve societal problems such as gender inequality.