UO Dept of Anthropology’s Lamia Karim

The new book by Center for Study for Women in Society Associate Director Lamia Karim was garnering attention months before its debut. An in-depth feminist critique of the much-lauded microcredit process in Bangladesh, Microfinance and Its Discontents: Women in Debt in Bangladesh was touted at the beginning of the year on the Huffington Post’s “Most Anticipated” list.

In early March, Karim was interviewed by reporters from National Public Radio and the Wall Street Journal for her expertise on the Grameen Bank and microfinance issues in Bangladesh, following the efforts to fire Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus from his post as director of the Grameen Bank by the Central Bank of Bangladesh.

Karim had critical remarks to make about the effects of microfinance lending by the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh: “Women, poor women in particular, are getting deeper and deeper in debt. And this is largely because, similar to the banking industry in the U.S., microfinance for a very long time has been an unregulated industry. So people could go out and extend loans to people without any kind of oversight.”

» Learn more…