Women Empowerment Through Microfinance:  Empirical Evidence from Ghana

Bismark Addai

doi:doi:10.11648/j.jfa.20170501.11

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Women Empowerment Through Microfinance: Empirical Evidence from Ghana

Bismark Addai

Published in Journal of Finance and Accounting (Volume 5, Issue 1)

Received: 4 September 2016 Accepted: 21 November 2016 Published: 13 January 2017

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Abstract

Microfinance programmes are currently promoted as a key strategy for simultaneously addressing both women empowerment and poverty alleviation in Ghana. However, there has been a hot debate on the potency of microfinance in empowering the Ghanaian women. Apparently, this research was conducted to analyse the impact of microfinance services on the economic and social empowerment of women in Ghana. A purposive non-probability sampling technique was utilized in a 500 sample-size selection of female microfinance customers from Ashanti, Greater Accra, Central, Eastern and Western Regions of Ghana (100 from each region). For this study, SPSS and STATA Statistical tools were used to analyze the data and the ordered probit model was used as the estimation model. Glaring in this study is a statistically significant positive relationship between microfinance and women empowerment, for both economic and social but such relationship is dependent on marital status and educational level of the women with age having no controlling effect. Nevertheless, it is also evident in this study that women encounter myriad problems in accessing microfinance services of which high interest rate is paramount. Recommendations have been given on how microfinance outreach programmes could be enriched especially among the rural women since enhanced microfinance accessibility could be a perfect tool to accelerate economic and social empowerment of women in Ghana.

Published in	Journal of Finance and Accounting (Volume 5, Issue 1)
DOI	10.11648/j.jfa.20170501.11
Page(s)	1-11
Creative Commons	This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright	Copyright © The Author(s), 2017. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Microfinance, Economic, Social, Women Empowerment, Poverty Alleviation

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Bismark Addai. (2017). Women Empowerment Through Microfinance: Empirical Evidence from Ghana. Journal of Finance and Accounting, 5(1), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.jfa.20170501.11

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Bismark Addai. Women Empowerment Through Microfinance: Empirical Evidence from Ghana. J. Finance Account. 2017, 5(1), 1-11. doi: 10.11648/j.jfa.20170501.11

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AMA Style

Bismark Addai. Women Empowerment Through Microfinance: Empirical Evidence from Ghana. J Finance Account. 2017;5(1):1-11. doi: 10.11648/j.jfa.20170501.11

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@article{10.11648/j.jfa.20170501.11,
  author = {Bismark Addai},
  title = {Women Empowerment Through Microfinance:  Empirical Evidence from Ghana},
  journal = {Journal of Finance and Accounting},
  volume = {5},
  number = {1},
  pages = {1-11},
  doi = {10.11648/j.jfa.20170501.11},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.jfa.20170501.11},
  eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.jfa.20170501.11},
  abstract = {Microfinance programmes are currently promoted as a key strategy for simultaneously addressing both women empowerment and poverty alleviation in Ghana. However, there has been a hot debate on the potency of microfinance in empowering the Ghanaian women. Apparently, this research was conducted to analyse the impact of microfinance services on the economic and social empowerment of women in Ghana. A purposive non-probability sampling technique was utilized in a 500 sample-size selection of female microfinance customers from Ashanti, Greater Accra, Central, Eastern and Western Regions of Ghana (100 from each region). For this study, SPSS and STATA Statistical tools were used to analyze the data and the ordered probit model was used as the estimation model. Glaring in this study is a statistically significant positive relationship between microfinance and women empowerment, for both economic and social but such relationship is dependent on marital status and educational level of the women with age having no controlling effect. Nevertheless, it is also evident in this study that women encounter myriad problems in accessing microfinance services of which high interest rate is paramount. Recommendations have been given on how microfinance outreach programmes could be enriched especially among the rural women since enhanced microfinance accessibility could be a perfect tool to accelerate economic and social empowerment of women in Ghana.},
 year = {2017}
}

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TY  - JOUR
T1  - Women Empowerment Through Microfinance:  Empirical Evidence from Ghana
AU  - Bismark Addai
Y1  - 2017/01/13
PY  - 2017
N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.jfa.20170501.11
DO  - 10.11648/j.jfa.20170501.11
T2  - Journal of Finance and Accounting
JF  - Journal of Finance and Accounting
JO  - Journal of Finance and Accounting
SP  - 1
EP  - 11
PB  - Science Publishing Group
SN  - 2330-7323
UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.jfa.20170501.11
AB  - Microfinance programmes are currently promoted as a key strategy for simultaneously addressing both women empowerment and poverty alleviation in Ghana. However, there has been a hot debate on the potency of microfinance in empowering the Ghanaian women. Apparently, this research was conducted to analyse the impact of microfinance services on the economic and social empowerment of women in Ghana. A purposive non-probability sampling technique was utilized in a 500 sample-size selection of female microfinance customers from Ashanti, Greater Accra, Central, Eastern and Western Regions of Ghana (100 from each region). For this study, SPSS and STATA Statistical tools were used to analyze the data and the ordered probit model was used as the estimation model. Glaring in this study is a statistically significant positive relationship between microfinance and women empowerment, for both economic and social but such relationship is dependent on marital status and educational level of the women with age having no controlling effect. Nevertheless, it is also evident in this study that women encounter myriad problems in accessing microfinance services of which high interest rate is paramount. Recommendations have been given on how microfinance outreach programmes could be enriched especially among the rural women since enhanced microfinance accessibility could be a perfect tool to accelerate economic and social empowerment of women in Ghana.
VL  - 5
IS  - 1
ER  -

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Bismark Addai

School of Management and Economics, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, P.R. China

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APA Style

Bismark Addai. (2017). Women Empowerment Through Microfinance: Empirical Evidence from Ghana. Journal of Finance and Accounting, 5(1), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.jfa.20170501.11

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ACS Style

Bismark Addai. Women Empowerment Through Microfinance: Empirical Evidence from Ghana. J. Finance Account. 2017, 5(1), 1-11. doi: 10.11648/j.jfa.20170501.11

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AMA Style

Bismark Addai. Women Empowerment Through Microfinance: Empirical Evidence from Ghana. J Finance Account. 2017;5(1):1-11. doi: 10.11648/j.jfa.20170501.11

Copy | Download

@article{10.11648/j.jfa.20170501.11,
  author = {Bismark Addai},
  title = {Women Empowerment Through Microfinance:  Empirical Evidence from Ghana},
  journal = {Journal of Finance and Accounting},
  volume = {5},
  number = {1},
  pages = {1-11},
  doi = {10.11648/j.jfa.20170501.11},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.jfa.20170501.11},
  eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.jfa.20170501.11},
  abstract = {Microfinance programmes are currently promoted as a key strategy for simultaneously addressing both women empowerment and poverty alleviation in Ghana. However, there has been a hot debate on the potency of microfinance in empowering the Ghanaian women. Apparently, this research was conducted to analyse the impact of microfinance services on the economic and social empowerment of women in Ghana. A purposive non-probability sampling technique was utilized in a 500 sample-size selection of female microfinance customers from Ashanti, Greater Accra, Central, Eastern and Western Regions of Ghana (100 from each region). For this study, SPSS and STATA Statistical tools were used to analyze the data and the ordered probit model was used as the estimation model. Glaring in this study is a statistically significant positive relationship between microfinance and women empowerment, for both economic and social but such relationship is dependent on marital status and educational level of the women with age having no controlling effect. Nevertheless, it is also evident in this study that women encounter myriad problems in accessing microfinance services of which high interest rate is paramount. Recommendations have been given on how microfinance outreach programmes could be enriched especially among the rural women since enhanced microfinance accessibility could be a perfect tool to accelerate economic and social empowerment of women in Ghana.},
 year = {2017}
}

Copy | Download

TY  - JOUR
T1  - Women Empowerment Through Microfinance:  Empirical Evidence from Ghana
AU  - Bismark Addai
Y1  - 2017/01/13
PY  - 2017
N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.jfa.20170501.11
DO  - 10.11648/j.jfa.20170501.11
T2  - Journal of Finance and Accounting
JF  - Journal of Finance and Accounting
JO  - Journal of Finance and Accounting
SP  - 1
EP  - 11
PB  - Science Publishing Group
SN  - 2330-7323
UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.jfa.20170501.11
AB  - Microfinance programmes are currently promoted as a key strategy for simultaneously addressing both women empowerment and poverty alleviation in Ghana. However, there has been a hot debate on the potency of microfinance in empowering the Ghanaian women. Apparently, this research was conducted to analyse the impact of microfinance services on the economic and social empowerment of women in Ghana. A purposive non-probability sampling technique was utilized in a 500 sample-size selection of female microfinance customers from Ashanti, Greater Accra, Central, Eastern and Western Regions of Ghana (100 from each region). For this study, SPSS and STATA Statistical tools were used to analyze the data and the ordered probit model was used as the estimation model. Glaring in this study is a statistically significant positive relationship between microfinance and women empowerment, for both economic and social but such relationship is dependent on marital status and educational level of the women with age having no controlling effect. Nevertheless, it is also evident in this study that women encounter myriad problems in accessing microfinance services of which high interest rate is paramount. Recommendations have been given on how microfinance outreach programmes could be enriched especially among the rural women since enhanced microfinance accessibility could be a perfect tool to accelerate economic and social empowerment of women in Ghana.
VL  - 5
IS  - 1
ER  -

Copy | Download