Behind Women’s Emancipation and Oppression: Contested Expertise in Global Microcredit Governance

Experts often debate global microcredit governance along two opposing spectrums: microcredit as either an emancipatory or oppressive instrument for women. Expert debates about women’s emancipation and oppression through microcredit, however, neither consider the women for whom the debate is staged as experts nor explore in sufficient detail the role and effects of expertise. Drawing on a series of interviews in rural Bangladesh, the article offers expert reflections on microcredit governance of three women, often referred to as ‘poor women’ by experts. It puts the three women’s worldviews in an analytical comparison with those of selected microcredit experts. Far from engaging with women’s agency, the article argues that well-known microcredit experts often overestimate their own knowledge and underestimate the knowledge of women, rendering the latter as docile subjects of social and legal reform. With the help of the three women, the article illuminates the role of expertise in the reproduction of knowledge and social hierarchy in global microcredit governance.