ArticleSocial science & medicine (1982)2021
Women's participation in microfinance: Effects on Women's agency, exposure to partner violence, and mental health.
Article in Social science & medicine (1982), 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 38 citations in OpenAlex.
- A systematic review of microfinance interventions and violence against women: results from low- and middle-income contexts.BMJ global health · 2025Pooled it
- Integrated Depression Care and Livelihood Interventions for Low-Income Women in Vietnam: Protocol for a Cluster Nonrandomized Controlled Trial (LIFE-DM).JMIR research protocols · 2026Article
- Gender-specific economic interventions for women's mental health and well-being in South Asia: a systematic review.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2026Review
- Article
- Transitions in women's experience of physical domestic violence during 2001-2020 and related risk and protective factors: the MINIMat longitudinal cohort study in rural Bangladesh.BMJ global health · 2025Article
- Microcredit, Gender Norms, and Women's Experiences of Economic Coercion and Agency in Matlab, Bangladesh.Journal of the Asia Pacific economy · 2025Article
- Mapping the intellectual structure of microfinance and women's empowerment: A bibliometric analysis.Heliyon · 2024Article
- How does empowering men affect intimate partner violence? Evidence from Bangladesh.SSM - population health · 2024Article
- Artificial intelligence application in counselling practices. A multigroup analysis of acceptance and awareness using gender and professional rank.Frontiers in digital health · 2024Article
- Article
- Factors Associated With Domestic Violence Against Women at Different Stages of Life: Findings From a 19-Year Longitudinal Dataset From the MINIMat Trial in Rural Bangladesh (2001-2020).Journal of interpersonal violence · 2023Article
- Women's Employment and Intimate Partner Violence: Understanding the Role of Individual and Community Structural Drivers in Low- and Middle-Income Countries.Journal of interpersonal violence · 2023Article
- Development and validation of the Economic Coercion Scale-20 (ECS-20): A short-form of the ECS-36.PloS one · 2023Article
- Men's Use of Economic Coercion Against Women in Rural Bangladesh.Psychology of violence · 2022Article
- Defining Power and Agency in Gender Relations in El Salvador: Consequences for Intimate Partner Violence and Women's Mental Health.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
objectivesThe health and social effects of women's microfinance participation remain debated.
methodsUsing propensity-score methods, we assessed effects of microfinance participation on novel measures of agency; intimate partner violence (IPV) exposure; and depressive symptoms in 930 wives in Matlab, Bangladesh interviewed 11/2018-01/2019.
resultsParticipants, versus non-participants, were married younger (16.7 vs. 17.4 years), more often Muslim (90.7% vs. 86.2%), less schooled (5.4 vs. 6.8 grades), and more often had husbands (27.0% vs. 19.6%) and mothers (63.2% vs. 50.5%) without schooling. Participants and non-participants had similar unadjusted mean scores for prior-week depressive symptoms, prior-year IPV, and intrinsic attitudinal agency (gender-equitable attitudes; non-justification of wife beating). Participants had higher unadjusted mean scores for intrinsic voice/mobility; instrumental agency (using financial services, voice with husband, voice/mobility outside home); and collective agency. Average adjusted treatment effects were non-significant for depressive symptoms, IPV, and attitudinal intrinsic agency, and significantly favorable for other agency outcomes.
conclusionsMicrofinance participation had no adverse health effects and favorable empowerment effects in Bangladeshi wives. POLICY IMPLICATIONS: Microfinance can empower women without adverse health effects. Social-norms programming with men and women may be needed to change gendered expectations about the distribution of unpaid labor and the rights of women.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.