Abstract:
It is widely accepted that women are central to rural well-being and national economic
development. However, the role of women is hampered by the fact that they often hold low
positions in many developing countries. Because of historical and cultural problems, women are
also at greater risk of poverty. In addition to being a human rights issue, the current situation of
women requires that steps be taken to uplift them. The empowerment of women is also the basis
for changing lives at the family and community level. In this regard, the introduction of
microfinance is one way to empower women. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to
assess the impact of microfinance on social and economic empowerment of Harar women. The
study assesses the impact of microfinance financial services on women clients’ socio-economic,
political, psychological and personal empowerment. For the purpose of data collection 177
women clients of Harara Microfinance were selected using simple random sampling technique.
Besides, secondary data source, interviews and focus group discussion were used to
strengthening the findings. To analyze the data the study used both descriptive and inferential
statistics. According to the descriptive statistics, 163 respondents were responded to the
questionnaire out of 177. The data were analyzed using statistical package for social sciences
(SPSS) version 22 software. The comparative analysis results indicate that the monthly income,
monthly saving and asset accumulated and capital of women beneficiaries were dramatically
improving. The responses of the women show that they are empowered in economic, social,
political, psychological and personal aspects after joining the Harar microfinance. The logistic
regression result revealed that the women age, amount of loan borrowed for the first time, types
of business activities undertaken, current capital, current working capital, current monthly
income, current monthly household expenditure, current monthly saving and number of
employees are significant at 5% level of significance and have been significant in affecting
women’s empowerment. Microfinance institutions should try to extend more credit facilities to
clients to expand their businesses since the study results confirmed that microfinance had a
positive impact in empowering women.
Thus concerned body of the region, concerned body of HMFI and woreda level administration
body’s by cooperation will give attention to increase the activities of the MFI to benefit more
beneficiaries.
