| Abstract: |
Women's empowerment is crucial to improve their political, social, economic,
health and sanitary situation. This paper estimates the effect of microfinance
on women's empowerment in Djibouti. Using cross-sectional data of 692
households based in Djibouti's six major centres Djibouti-ville, Arta,
Ali-Sabieh, Dikhil, Obock and Tadjourah, we construct original measures of
women's empowerment index covering three dimensions (economic, social and
interpersonal). We examine the extent to which access to microfinance, amount
of loans obtained and their duration modifies women's status at home.
Employing the instrumental variables (IV) estimations and a number of
econometric techniques as robustness checks, we find a significantly positive
association between microcredit and women's empowerment. Households with
access to loans from MFIs are respectively 35.4%, 30.9% and 10.1% more likely
to be economically, socially and interpersonally empowered. The effect of
access to microfinance and the number of loans is also significant. However,
women who took four or more loans from microfinance institutions are 27.7%,
23.5% and 6.8% less likely to be economically, socially and interpersonally
empowered. The results of the study confirm generally positive socioeconomic
effects of microfinance programmes. |