Examining the Potentials for Women’s Empowerment through Micro-Credit Lending - A Case Study in Tanzania

Abstract: This thesis is based on an eight week long field-study in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, with the aim of examining the challenges and opportunities for women’s empowerment through taking a micro-credit loan within a Non Governmental Organization (NGO) named Village Community Bank (VICOBA). This is done because of the posed objective that micro-credit lending to women is a tool for empowering them, therefore it is relevant to identify challenges in order to understand the potential for women’s empowerment. The theoretical framework consists of two defined concepts of women’s empowerment that has been used in order to analyze the collected data. The research has been conducted through qualitative, semi-structured interviews centered on a case-study. The key findings that were identified that indicated positive impacts of women’s personal and collective empowerment was within the participation in the micro-credit lending group, although this did not contribute to relational empowerment within the household. The challenges for women’s empowerment to occur were connected to economic obstacles such as the structure of the micro-credit loan, as well as market limitations.