Microfinance and Postconflict Women's Empowerment in the Balkans A Qualitative Comparative Analysis

Preya Bhattacharya offers the first full-length assessment of the impact of microfinance on post-conflict women’s empowerment in the Balkans. In so doing, she provides vital new insights into what women’s microfinance contributes to macroeconomic development in the former Yugoslavian countries of Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo. At the same time, she develops a uniquely clear, concise approach to Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), which she uses to make sense of an extensive, exhaustive raw set of available data and research. This methodology not only offers a way of using both micro and macroeconomic data to revisit Amartya Sen’s theory of development as freedom, but also provides a framework for other researchers to assess the impacts of microfinance on women’s development throughout the world, and particularly in the Global South. For its original focus, its clear and streamlined methodological approach, and its global implications, this book provides a go-to source for researchers, students, and practitioners of international development, gender studies, and economics and finance.