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Abstract

A concern with gender issues in financial services is not new. From the early 1970s, women’s movements in a number of countries with India also, became increasingly interested in the degree to which women were able to gain access to and benefit from poverty-focused credit programmes and credit cooperatives.Women are facing discrimination in terms of access to credit and other financial services from traditional days. There is a need of Microfinance, a powerful tool, for empowering women especially belong to villages and rural areas. Microfinance plays a critical role in empowering women and it is an inductive tool of poverty reduction which has leads to the empowerment of women relieving them from debt and financial burden. The success of microfinance initiatives has often been attributed to their particular focus on empowering women and encouraging their self-reliance through developing their own means of income. In other words, where financial institutions failed, Microfinance earmarked by tackling the tradeoff between outreach and sustainability.