Microfund for Women:a case history of microcredit in Jordan.

Microfinance in the Arab World is a quite recent phenomenon, as the first microfinance institution appeared at the end of 1990s. Among all the Arab countries, in particular in the Middle East, the Jordanian microfinance market is one of the most developed and significant, thanks to the quite stable macroeconomic conditions and the national government belief that microcredit initiatives can be a good instrument to reduce poverty. This is particularly true among women, the part of the population most excluded by the official banking system but, at the same time, the most involved in running unregistered – home based enterprises. A small number of descriptive studies on Arab microfinance are available, nevertheless they usually do not enter into details of the lending process. This study, basically descriptive, aims at contributing to fill this gap, illustrating the working process of Microfund for Women, the Jordanian institution that is both the biggest and the most highly focused on the poor. The analysis, primarily based on first-hand information gathered during a fieldwork in Jordan, is conducted following the traditional measurement of the three dimensions of microcredit: outreach, sustainability and impact.