Abstract:

Women’s empowerment has become a prominent issue in developing countries. And microcredit program has been considered as a major development tool for poverty alleviation and lifting the poor, especially women, out of poverty. Bangladesh is one of the densely populated countries in the world. This paper examined the way in which microcredit schemes have improved the empowerment of women in rural Bangladesh. The data was collected from 324 rural women borrowers on a field study from six villages in the district of Tangail, Bangladesh through the administration of questionnaires. This survey was conducted during the period of July to December, 2016. Data was also collected from women non-borrowers to compare the impact between borrowers and control-group.  Data has been analyzed by SPSS software and also Logistic Regression is used to estimate the enhancement of women’s empowerment those who associate with microcredit program. A significant outcome of this research showed that microcredit has a positive improvement on women’s empowerment. The results confirmed that microcredit has both significant and positive impact on women’s empowerment.