Communicating Gender in Microenterprise Development

Abstract

Microenterprise is hailed as the solution to women’s poverty, applauded by agents of the development industry, financial institutions, and public reviews. But what are the consequences of this strategy for the ways in which we understand development itself, for our projections of women’s roles in development, and for the consideration of gender dynamics; and how does communication figure in this narrative? This chapter explores these questions through a study of microenterprise programs explicitly focusing on women in the South Asian region, with special attention to known interventions and conditions in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. I consider the narrative of microenterprise interventions that employ communications as tools to resolve problematic conditions women face as “victims” of poverty, enabled through the “heroic” actions of men administrating formal finance institutions. This analysis is not meant to suggest that women are indeed victims or that men are necessarily heroes, but to consider how gender differentiates roles for women and men in the construction of social change.