Perpetua Kilasi

Micro-credit and Women Empowerment in Tanzania: Gender and Economic Perspectives Perpetua Kilasi

Women empowerment has been discussed by different scholars but there are still gaps in literature. This piece of work presents an assessment of factors hindering economic empowerment of female clients who have managed to graduate to the higher levels of loan. It reveals that in some aspects, credit has been effective in empowering women economically and socially, but on the other hand factors such as low confidence, social cultural roles, low level of education, high interest rates and limited access to Information Communication Technology (ICT) are hindering effectiveness of micro-credit in empowering women economically. Therefore continuous education is still needed for different stakeholders to understand the importance of women empowerment to the country's economy. Micro Finance Institutions therefore should integrate with policy making bodies to support women in legal rights so that social and political empowerment can be increased and ultimately reduce gender imbalances in various aspects like access to assets.