Empowering Women: Microfinance or Wage Employment

Abstract

Women empowerment is a focus of regional and global programs created towards women development in recent years. Economic empowerment seems to bear fruits for the interpersonal, social, legal and political areas as well. Microfinance programs and wage employment programs have served as two significant instruments to stimulate this process of positive change starting from individual/ interpersonal level and expanding to families and communities. This exploratory study attempts to compare microfinance with wage programs to see their effectiveness in Karachi. A total of 120 interview questionnaire was distributed among women respondents, two focus studies and five interviews with the policy makers provided insights to understand these programs. The study discovers that women who availed microfinance programs have shown low rate of economic and social development, whereas women who availed wage programs have shown higher level of economic and social development. Furthermore, findings have also supported the fact that absence of legal framework, infrastructure, training programs by microfinance institutions inhibit the growth of the women enterprise and support wage employment which ensure the fulfillment of basic needs at early level. The new dimensions of the study can be further investigated by increasing the sample size.