Hutton, Tamera Leigh2025-02-202025-02-202001https://hdl.handle.net/1828/21334Microcredit is considered a viable tool for the reduction of poverty in developing countries. It involves the dispensation of small loans, primarily to women who cannot access loans from conventional lending institutions. Microcredit strategies employed in Victoria are derived from those used in other parts of the world, but they are unique to their particular social and economic context. This study is concerned with the use of microcredit as a means to alleviate women's poverty in Victoria. The purpose of this research was to determine women's experiences while participating in, or organizing, microcredit programs in Victoria between February 1997 and June 1998. The study focussed on three organizations with microlending components operating in and around Victoria. Research methods included (1) a literature review, (2) participant observation in community economic development organizations, (3) personal communication with program administrators of three lending organizations and six economic development organizations, and (4) semi-structured interviews with program administrators and women participants in microcredit programs. Data gathered through participant observation, personal communication, and semi-structured interviews describe the benefits and difficulties involved in the creation and utilization of microcredit in Victoria. My analysis of this data is compared with benefits and difficulties of microcredit schemes described in studies based on fieldwork conducted elsewhere by Adams (1992), Ardener (1964, 1996), Bouman (1977), and Geertz (1962), among others. The constructive objective of my analysis is to outline the complexity of issues surrounding the implementation and sustainability of microcredit within a specific social and economic environment. This study suggests that microcredit programs did not emerge in Victoria as fully developed and discrete entities. Their emergence was conditioned by the dynamic and persistent socially minded initiatives influenced by women's poverty and community cooperation. The success of microcredit programs available to women in Victoria was dependent upon the viability of individual business plans, the appropriateness of specific programs, the complementarity of government policy, and the level of cooperation between loan recipients.enAvailable to the World Wide WebThesis