Micro-credit and Emotional Well-being: Experience of Poor Rural Women from Matlab, Bangladesh
This paper explores experiences of emotional stress by poor rural women involved in credit-based income-generating activities, from Matlab, Bangladesh. The study is carried out in the backdrop of micro-credit programs being used in Bangladesh as critical anti-poverty tool for the poorest, especially women. The study uses comparison of a group of women receiving micro-credit with another group of non-recipients of similar socio-economic status.
The study draws attention to a few factors and their implications for program participants:
- Peer group pressure as a substitute for collateral and insurance against timely repayments leads to:
- Increased debt-liability on the individual household,
- Increased tension and frustration among household members,
- New forms of dominance over women and increased household violence.
- Increased focus on women's participation in micro-credit programs and women's involvement in credit-based self-employment activities may lead to:
- Stressful life situations which in turn may trigger mental illnesses.
Finally, the paper suggests improvements in Bangladesh's healthcare delivery system to cater to the mental health needs of the women, especially rural women. It also states that micro-credit programs need to seriously re-think their approach of creating an enabling environment, free of tension and anxiety, for the poor women.