Abstract
With 1.7 billion adults worldwide alienated from traditional financial structures(Drake, 2018), increasing their access as a method of building financial mobility is increasingly dominating discourse around international development; within this philanthrocapitalist conversation is the ever-popular model of microloans. By examining recently published articles documenting women receiving microloans, this prevailing assumption of philanthrocapitalism compared to the borrowers’ testimonies collected in the case studies listed above. In examining whether microloans increase some alienated women’s income-generating activities in developing areas, the conversation is redirected to borrowers lived experiences and the contextual factors that influence economic mobility. The following analysis attempts to answer the question of how microloans impact women's financial mobility by recentering discourse around their experiences and asking NGO academics, practitioners, and microfinanciers to do the same.
Recommended Citation
Schlukebir, Holli
(2026)
"The Lived Experiences of Philanthrocapitalism: Recentering Borrowers’ Experiences in Microloan Discourse,"
PNHA Review: Vol. 21:
Iss.
1, Article 6.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/pnhareview/vol21/iss1/6