Microfinance as post-conflict women’s economic development
Issues in adopting a smart economic strategy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19217656 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nedha De Silva (0000-0001-6932-903X, Monash University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-18 |
| Publication date | 2026-04-16 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Third World Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0143-6597 • E-ISSN: 1360-2241 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/01436597.2026.2651288 |
| OpenAlex | W7154615007 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 39 |
In post-conflict contexts, microfinance is introduced as a financial infrastructure for women to continue their everyday life within a broader economic recovery framework by supporting productive and social reproductive labour. However, the packaging of microfinance as smart economics with the goals of (1) promoting financial inclusion among women, increasing women’s economic empowerment, and (2) contributing to the national economy, complicate the matter. Using a multi-sited case study conducted in Sri Lanka in 2021 and 2022, this paper explores the productive and social reproductive challenges women borrowers face in microfinance programmes that adopt a smart economics approach in post-war zones through their everyday lived experiences. Building on the existing scholarship that stresses the increasing gendered violence and indebtedness that women borrowers experience in post-conflict zones due to microfinance, the paper explores the often-overlooked aspects of productive and social reproductive labour that women must navigate alongside these issues. By doing so, the study highlights the importance of considering the broader gendered structural issues that are imposed on women within such financial models and emphasises the urgent need to focus on alternative financial models that promote everyday financial and other forms of security to women
Economic strategy · Global strategy · Microfinance · Technology strategy · Third world · Innovation and Socioeconomic Development · Microfinance and Financial Inclusion · Social and Economic Development in India
World Development Report 2012
The Political Economy of Microfinance
Microfinance and Its Discontents
Why Doesn’t Microfinance Work?
Social Reproduction Theory
Moral Boundaries
The Impact of Microfinance on Factors Empowering Women
Marx, Women, and Capitalist Social Reproduction
Galvanizing girls for development? Critiquing the shift from ‘smart’ to ‘smarter economics’
Depletion
The risks and incentives of disciplinary neoliberal feminism
The Mother, the Wife, the Entrepreneur? Women’s Agency and Microfinance in a Disappearing Post-Conflict Welfare State Context
Navigating the digital informal economy during the Covid-19 pandemic
Mundane heroines
From Depletion to Regeneration
The ‘new economy’ and social risk
Positive responses, uneven experiences
House ablaze
What do buzzwords do for development policy? a critical look at ‘participation’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘poverty reduction’
Debt Is My Companion
Running on Empty
Caring ways of resistance in postwar Sri Lanka
Microfinance as poverty-shame debt
An Intersectional Analysis of International Relations
Feminist everyday political economy
Care and silence in women's everyday peacebuilding in Myanmar
The Changing Role of Women in Sri Lankan Society
The Underside of Microfinance
The case of Kiva and Grameen
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |