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Duvendack, Maren 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8125-9115 and Maclean, Kate
(2015)
(Mis)use of evidence in microfinance programming in the global south: a critique.
Contemporary Social Science, 10 (2).
pp. 202-211.
ISSN 2158-2041
Abstract
This paper looks at the use of economic and social ‘evidence’ in debates on microfinance. Microfinance was originally inspired by small-scale women's savings and credit organisations. When its potential to become a financially sustainable, even profit-making, development intervention was recognised, microfinance underwent a ‘revolution’ that was to convert it into a much lauded development ‘panacea’. Microfinance's reputation has, however, been tarnished by reports refuting the evidential basis for claims made on its behalf. We trace the intervention's ascendance and the evidential basis on which microfinance was promoted. We argue, firstly, that the exclusion of qualitative evidence was not an epistemological imperative, but a political choice, and, secondly, that the large-scale quantitative evidence that did support the scaling up of microfinance was inadequate in terms of methodological rigour. In concluding, we place the example of microfinance within wider debates on evidence in development and argue that evidence can never be apolitical.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | Special Issue: International and Interdisciplinary Insights into Evidence-based Policy |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | evidence-based policy-making,microfinance,social science research methods,women's empowerment,social capital,sdg 1 - no poverty,sdg 5 - gender equality,sdg 8 - decent work and economic growth ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/no_poverty |
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Global Development (formerly School of International Development) |
| UEA Research Groups: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Gender and Development Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Impact Evaluation |
| Depositing User: | Pure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 08 Dec 2015 17:00 |
| Last Modified: | 21 Oct 2022 00:58 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/55726 |
| DOI: | 10.1080/21582041.2015.1061686 |
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