Micro-credit and emotional well-being: Experience of poor rural women from Matlab, Bangladesh

Development programs concerned with material improvement for participants ignore the impact of subjective factors such as discrepancy between expectation and achievement, and anxieties and tensions resulting from newly adopted nontraditional roles by women on their emotional and physical well-being. This study explores experiences of emotional stress by poor rural women, including those involved in credit-based income-generating activities, from Matlab, Bangladesh. In the multivariate analysis, BRAC membership failed to show any discernable effect on the prevalence of emotional stress among poor women. Women reported symptoms of depression while coping such situations. The implications of these findings for emotional well-being of women are discussed. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.