Can Microfinance Work? How to Improve Its Ethical Balance and Effectiveness by Lesley Sherrat

Excerpt

Lesley Sherrat’s Can Microfinance Work? How to Improve Its Ethical Balance and Effectiveness is a ten-chapter book that explores the effectiveness of the central microfinance model. Microfinance is “the making of small loans to poor borrowers who lack access to mainstream financial services” (xiii). The model usually provides basic business training and standardized loan products with small repayments requirements, predominantly to groups of five to 20 people with up-and-coming women in leadership roles. In order to critically examine the model, Sherrat offers a thorough investigation of the extent to which the model creates conditions for exploitation and coercion, and analyzes the distribution of its benefits and burdens. This book is divided into four conceptual segments discussed below: empirics, micro-ethics, macro-ethics, and making microfinance more ethical. …