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Abstract

This article reviews research on women-centered U.S. microenterprise development programs (MDPs) by applying the concepts of conversion factors and capability of Amartya Sen’s capability approach. The article indicates how women-centered U.S. MDPs are appropriate in terms of reflecting women’s unique conversion factors in their programs, such as financial, human, social capital, and other structural gender discriminations, and how effective they are in assisting women to improve their capabilities. It concludes that women-centered U.S. MDPs do not sufficiently address women’s social environmental conversion factors in their programs, such as gender role and power relations.

Keywords

economic justice empowerment feminist theories women in poverty

U.S. microenterprise development programs (MDPs) provide training, access to credit, business consultations, and other network supports for people who want to start a microenterprise (Schreiner & Woller, 2003). A microenterprise is commonly defined as a small-scale business that hires fewer than five employees, including the owner (Solomon, 1992). It differs from a conventional small business, which is defined as consisting of a maximum 1,500 employees and $175 million in average annual receipts, depending on the industry (U.S. Small Business Administration, 2010). U.S. MDPs have assisted women, particularly those from economically and socially disadvantaged backgrounds, in enhancing their economic empowerment through business start-ups (Jurik, 2005). Studies have found that women constitute a significant portion of MDPs in the United States. For instance, according to the FIELD program of the Aspen Institute (2005), which has measured the performance of U.S. MDPs since 2004, approximately 82% of the clients who participated in the survey were women.

The large proportion of women in U.S. MDPs has been attributed to gender inequality in the labor market. Many women choose to participate in MDPs to avoid glass-ceiling effects and to have greater flexibility and economic opportunities (Dumas, 1999). However, the fact that U.S. MDPs have served a considerable number of women does not necessarily mean that they have meaningfully contributed to improving women’s economic and social situations. To evaluate the impact of women-centered MDPs on women, the gender and development (GAD) approach can provide useful insights for identifying the criteria for evaluation. The GAD approach aims not only to assist women in achieving economic self-sufficiency but to change unequal gender relationships and power by integrating women into development programs (Drolet, 2010). Therefore, it attempts to identify women’s distinct differences compared to men and unequal gender power relations in a social context. The GAD approach then develops gender-sensitive program designs and practices to address and challenge the unequal power relations (Jackson & Pearson, 1998). Within the GAD approach, two questions can be raised when evaluating U.S. women-centered MDPs: (1) Are the training programs of women-centered MDPs appropriate in reflecting women’s differences and interests? and (2) Do women-centered MDPs facilitate women in achieving both economic self-sufficiency and gender equality?

This article examines research on women-centered U.S. MDPs that has evaluated the appropriateness and effectiveness of MDPs in enhancing women’s self-sufficiency and gender equality. The appropriateness of MDPs refers to the extent to which the MDP program designs are gender sensitive to reflect women’s unique situations, such as financial, human, social capital, and other structural gender discriminations like gender segregation in labor market. The effectiveness of MDPs is evaluated in regard to the extent to which the MDPs enhance women’s economic and psychological self-sufficiency, such as business start-ups, gains in income, empowerment, and gender equality. This review applies Amartya Sen’s capability approach, particularly the concepts of conversion factors and capability, as a framework to examine the appropriateness and effectiveness of U.S. MDPs on women’s self-sufficiency and gender equality.

The article consists of three parts: the historical context of U.S. MDPs, Sen’s capability approach as a theoretical framework, and the review of studies regarding the appropriateness and effectiveness of women-centered U.S. MDPs. Finally, it draws conclusions on whether U.S. MDPs for women are appropriate and effective in achieving women’s self-sufficiency and gender equality. The article contributes to providing an evaluation of the extent to which women-centered U.S. MDPs have achieved their goals of enhancing women’s self-sufficiency and gender equality by reflecting women’s distinct conditions (conversion factors) in their programs. Finally, it presents public policy and practice implications for improving the appropriateness and effectiveness of women-centered U.S. MDPs.

Historical Context of MDPs in the United States

In the 1980s, MDPs were introduced to the United States as an alternative strategy for providing low-income people, women, minorities, and immigrants in particular, with economic opportunities (Edgcomb, Klein, & Clark, 1996). During the 1970s, decent jobs with benefits had significantly declined in the United States because of factors such as a persistent economic recession, deunionization, corporate downsizing, and the exporting of jobs. More people began to choose self-employment as their alternative jobs. By the late 1970s, the number of self-employed people had increased significantly (Jurik, 2005). In this social context, the significant success of the microenterprise strategy in developing countries, such as the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, encouraged the U.S. government and many nongovernmental organizations that provided services for women, immigrants, and minorities to focus on the potentials of MDPs for the creation of jobs (Sherraden, Sanders, & Sherraden, 2004).

However, the pivotal moment that boosted the microenterprise strategy in the United States was the welfare reform under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, which replaced the entitlement to cash welfare with an approach that provides specific inducements for welfare recipients to participate in economic activities (Stoesz & Saunders, 1999). The U.S. government began to recognize that the microenterprise strategy is an innovative strategy to provide welfare recipients with job opportunities under the economic recession (Banerjee, 1998). Under U.S. government support, as of 2008, more than 700 MDPs work in the United States (Microenterprise Fund for Innovation, Effectiveness, Learning and Dissemination, 2008).

Sen’s Capability Approach

Sen is an economist who was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. For the past several decades, he has focused on analyzing the reasons and solutions for poverty and inequality. His capability approach has been adopted by many researchers as a normative framework for understanding welfare, well-being, equality, and social justice (Pressman & Summerfield, 2000).

Functioning and Capability

Capability is the essence of Sen’s approach, which focuses primarily on people’s ability to achieve their immediate and long-term goals (Robeyns, 2005). Proponents of the capability approach criticize individualism and the traditional framework of welfare and poverty analysis, which focus solely on subjective happiness, self-fulfillment, or material well-being that are measured by income, expenditures, and consumption (Sen, 1999). Sen (1999) argued that we need to shift our attention from personal possessions or material gains and use our capabilities to the fullest. He defined an individual’s personal possessions or use of them as functionings, which reflects “the various things that he or she manages to do or be in leading a life” (Sen, 1993, p. 31). The term functionings refers to both the physical and the mental states of an individual or a group, such as being employed, receiving proper nutrition and education, being involved in community life, and being respected (Sen, 1999). It is measured by one’s achievements, whereas the term capabilities refers to potential or alternative sets of functionings (Robeyns, 2005). For example, people buy a bicycle because of its functionings, which enables them to reach their destination more quickly than walking (Robeyns, 2005). However, some people may not be satisfied with riding a bicycle and need to arrive at work more quickly. In such a case, they would consider an alternative functionings (transportation) with higher speed, such as taking a bus, taxi, or train or buying a car. This alternative set of functionings is called capability. Sen (1993, p. 31) defined capabilities as the “alternative combinations of functionings the person can achieve, and from which he or she can choose one collection.” According to this example, taking a bus, taxi, or train or buying a car refer to a possible set of functionings that are related to transportation, and this is the person’s capability set available in the transportation area of life.

This concept of capabilities is highly related to freedom. For instance, a person wants to obtain a job, which requires a long commute, but does not have enough money to use public transportation, or his or her town has an inadequate public transportation system. In this scenario, the person is limited in choosing a job because of the lack of money or available public transportation (Jasek-Rysdahl, 2001). One could argue that this person could obtain a job near her or his home and get to it by walking. However, for Sen (1988, p. 278), freedom is “alternative bundles of functions that person may be able to achieve.” In this example, the alternative bundle of functionings for the person is a job in another town and accessible transportation to reach it. According to Sen’s model, the person’s freedom of choice is violated. Sen argued that economic development must entail giving people greater freedom and autonomy to achieve capabilities to attain their alternative functionings, which requires empowerment and an active role in their lives.

Conversion Factors

In focusing on an individual’s variances in relation to functionings, Sen (1997) argued that although some individuals have the same bundle of primary goods, such as income, liberty, and freedom for their basic lives, people’s different characteristics, such as sex, age, genetic endowment, and social power, convert similar provisions of primary goods into different functionings. He contended that it is necessary to consider circumstances that convert people’s resources into different functionings (Sen, 1997). Sen categorized three types of conversion factors: (1) personal conversion factors, such as disability, illness, age, or gender; (2) social environmental conversion factors, such as gender role, social norms, societal hierarchies, and power relationship; and (3) environmental conversion factors, such as temperature ranges, rainfall, and flooding (see Robeyns, 2000). These conversion factors lead to systematic differences in converting resources or incomes into different functionings and result in variances in individual welfare levels despite individuals having the same resources. For example, a disabled person would have less chance for a normal life, such as enjoying freedom of mobility and a social life, than an able-bodied person, even though he or she may have a larger basket of primary goods than an able-bodied person (Sen, 1997).

The Capability Approach and MDPs

According to Sen’s concepts, the objective of welfare policy should be to provide be not only resources, such as welfare benefits, but enough opportunities to achieve an alternative set of functionings, taking into consideration the individual, social, and environmental conditions. The underlying assumptions of MDPs are congruent with Sen’s capability approach. The main focus of MDPs is to improve participants’ functionings related to microenterprise start-ups and management, rather than to provide direct benefits, such as housing and financial subsidies. If individuals’ opportunities to achieve their goals, such as business start-ups, were attained through MDPs, their capability to achieve their goals would be improved, and their freedom of choice would be enhanced. Therefore, Sen’s capability approach can provide a useful framework for evaluating the appropriateness and effectiveness of U.S. MDPs for women.

Research Questions and Criteria for Selection

Using Sen’s capability approach, I reviewed the literature to examine the appropriateness and effectiveness of women-centered U.S MDPs, which requires an understanding of women’s different conversion factors compared to men’s within the contexts of business to evaluate how women-centered U.S. MDPs provide appropriate programs to reflect women’s different situations. Therefore, I considered studies that have examined three questions. First, what are the conversion factors of women in the United States within the contexts of business, especially in relation to personal and social environmental conversion factors? Second, how do U.S. MDPs consider women’s conversion factors in comparison to men’s in their program designs (the appropriateness of MDPs)? Third, how do the women-centered U.S. MDPs contribute to improving women’s capability related to self-sufficiency and gender equality (the effectiveness of MDPs)?

To examine women’s personal and social environmental conversion factors in the context of business, I used human, financial, and social capital frameworks because personal differences in these capitals are widely believed to be determinant of resources for entrepreneurial performance (Bosma, Van Praag, Thurik, & De Wit, 2004). Thus, I considered empirical studies and dissertations that were published from 1990 to 2010. Keywords for the search included U.S. microenterprise, business, self-employed, small business, women, gender, human, financial, and social capital using search engines such as google scholar. After I found approximately 1,030 articles, I selected research articles on women’s issues related to business, microenterprise, or MDPs in the United States. In sum, I reviewed 49 research articles that were mostly relevant to the research questions.

Review of the Conversion Factors of Women

Financial Capital

Gender differences in financial, human, and social capital within the U.S. business context have been addressed in several studies. With regard to financial capital, studies have found that men are more likely than are women to rely on formal funding resources, such as bank loans or venture capital financing, and to use a greater amount of personal financial resources, such as assets and savings (Carter & Kolvereid, 1998; Coleman & Robb, 2010).

Analyzing data from 1,699 participants in the United States, Carter and Kolvereid (1998) found that the men expected that 47% of their funding would come from outside formal sources, such as loans and equity from banks and private investors, whereas only 26% of the women expected outside funding. Instead, the women reported that more than half the available funding resources at start-up came from personal equity and loans. Gender differences in outside funding receiving rates appear to have lasted into the 2000s in the United States. By investigating the new Kauffman Firm Survey (Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, 2011), which tracked the early years of operation of 4,928 businesses that were founded between 2004 and 2006, Coleman and Robb (2010) reported that only a small proportion of women used outside equity investors (1.5%) or venture capital financing (0.25%), whereas men used more external equity (10.2% versus 8.2%) during the first year of business operation. Other studies have explored gender socialization as a social environmental factor that affects the financial capital of women entrepreneurs. In particular, many studies have reported that women are more likely to value relationships, security, and small businesses, rather than growth, risk taking, and big businesses as a result of gender socialization (Bellucci, Borisov, & Zazzaro, 2010; Coleman & Robb, 2009). These attributes are negatively evaluated by funding institutions, which tend to be male dominated. Other studies have argued that the reason for the lower rate of women’s outside funding rates is not attributed to gender discrimination in financial institutions, but to women’s lower application rate for outside funding (Becker-Blease & Sohl, 2007; Treichel & Scott, 2006). They have explained that women are less interested in seeking equity capital because they value personal satisfaction and relationship with stakeholders more than business growth as a result of gender socialization.

Human Capital

With respect to human capital, as measured by education, employment, and work experience (Coleman, 2007), studies have consistently found that there is no significant difference between female and male entrepreneurs in terms of educational level in the United States (Fairlie & Robb, 2009). However, women are more likely to major in liberal arts, health, and the natural sciences, rather than business and engineering, which are often preferred by funding agencies (Carter & Allen, 1997). In terms of work experience, studies have consistently reported that female entrepreneurs are less likely to have managerial, industrial, and business experience than their male counterparts (Carter & Allen, 1997; Carter & Williams, 2003). Because investors tend to favor entrepreneurs with experience in business start-ups, marketing, and management, women’s lack of experience in these fields is a major barrier to receiving funding for their businesses (Klapper & Parker, 2010).

These gender disparities in human capital negatively affect women’s business performance and profits. Using data from the U.S. census, Fairlie and Robb (2009) examined the gender effect on business performance and the role of human capital (e.g., prior work experiences) in relation to gender gaps in business performance. They found that female-owned businesses are 52.6% less likely to have generated profits and 12.9% more likely to have experienced foreclosure than are male-owned businesses. Fairlie and Robb determined that prior work experience in a similar business and in a family member’s business are significantly positively associated with profits and sales of entrepreneurs. They concluded that gender differences in human capital may account for some of the gender differences in business performance. Furthermore, gender disparity in human capital creates gender segregation in business. Studies have indicated that women’s lack of experience in business, technical, and leadership-related fields relegate women-owned businesses to the service and retail sectors, which have higher failure and lower profit rates (Coleman, 2007).

Social Capital

Social capital refers to networks, norms, and trusts that shape people’s social interactions (Putnam, 1993). Many researchers have argued that women’s networks have a much higher number of family members, relatives, and neighbors than do men’s networks (Burt, 1998), which are referred to as bonding social capital. Bonding social capital comprises relationships among members of a close social network, such as family members, relatives, and friends (Beugelsdijk & Smulders, 2003). In contrast, men’s networks are comprised of fewer relatives and neighbors, but include more (male) coworkers in larger organizations compared to women’s (Burt, 1998). Such relationships are referred to as bridging capital, which is defined as the relationships among people who are different in age, socioeconomic status, or race/ethnicity (Harpham, Grant, & Thomas, 2002). This difference in the composition of the social capital of men and women results in different outcomes in business opportunities and performance. Men are more likely to receive benefits from their social networks, such as business information, because their networks consist of people who have various types of information and higher socioeconomic status (Burt, 1998; Tata & Prasad, 2008).

These gender differences in the accumulation of social capital can be explained as a result of the impact of social environmental factors—gender role. Women’s responsibilities for child rearing and housekeeping, which are reinforced by patriarchy, relegate women to a limited boundary of social networks around family members and other relatives (Munch, McPherson, & Smith-Lovin, 1997). Women’s domestic responsibilities not only result in social capital accumulation toward bonding capital, which has been shown to be less economically influential than bridging capital, but diminish women’s business activities and are partially responsible for their businesses’ lower sales volume (Klapper & Parker, 2010).

Appropriateness and Effectiveness of U.S. MDPs for Women

Appropriateness

According to Sen’s capability framework, if women have unique conversion factors compared to men, such as distinct human, financial, social capital accumulation, and social environments, women-centered U.S. MDPs need to provide gender-sensitive programs to reflect women’s different conversion factors in their program designs. According to a limited number of studies (Langowitz, Sharpe, & Godwyn, 2006; Servon, 1997), U.S. women-centered MDPs appear to have focused on strengthening women’s lack of human and social capital by providing gender-sensitive programs for women. For example, 54% of the programs of 55 Women’s Business Centers (WBCs), which provide microenterprise training programs for women across the United States, have programs that focus on improving women’s accumulation of human capital, such as the Mindset of Women Business Owners, Life Skills Seminar on Empowerment, and leadership training programs (Langowitz et al., 2006). In addition to these programs, WBCs have attempted to strengthen participants’ social capital by providing long-term mentoring (84%) and networking (98%) services. Langowitz, Sharpe, and Godwyn (2006) concluded that programs related to the accumulation of human and social capital in the WBCs reflect an understanding of the WBCs that poor women usually lack opportunities to develop a high level of self-esteem and strong motivation to be entrepreneurs and lack leadership skills because of their lack of opportunities to participate in mainstream educational and economic activities. The Women’s Initiative for Self-Employment (WISE) program also includes gender-sensitive program designs for assisting women’s business start-ups. According to Servon (1997), WISE requires women to attend 12 weeks of classes before applying for a loan, with the purpose of improving women’s business managerial skills. Rather than focus exclusively on the business outcome, WISE also concentrates on sharing various life issues, such as the lack of self-confidence, with staff members during the 12-week training sessions.

However, merely focusing on improving women’s distinct human and social capital through training programs is not sufficient for improving women’s self-sufficiency through business start-ups. According to Sen, social environmental conversion factors, such as gender role, social norms, societal hierarchies, and power relationships, result in variances in individual welfare levels even when individuals have the same resources (Robeyns, 2000). My review of the conversion factors of women entrepreneurs indicated that women’s relative lack of financial, human, and social capitals compared to men’s are related to gender socialization, gender job segregation, and domestic labor responsibility. These are important social environmental conversion factors that shape women’s distinct financial, human, and social capitals.

However, in spite of the importance of considering social environmental conversion factors, U.S. MDPs do not appear to challenge discriminatory social environmental conversion factors against women. Some studies (Ehlers & Main, 1998; Fried, 2000; Jurik, 2005) criticized women-centered U.S MDPs because these MDPs reinforce gendered business segregation by emphasizing only personal growth and not considering the socioenvironmental conditions of women. These studies found that U.S. MDPs encouraged women to stay at home to run their businesses that were congruent with doing housework, which increased the women’s marginalized status in the labor market. A majority of the programs were related to women’s businesses, such as domestic services and food carts, restaurant, and catering, which were characterized by high failure rates, low profits, and poor growth rates (Ehlers & Main, 1998; Fried, 2000). In addition, trainers discussed neither sexism and racism in U.S. businesses nor strategies for coping with these structural challenges in their programs (Jurik, 2005). The studies concluded that supporting women’s microenterprises is inadequate if the programs do not challenge structural gender discriminations or provide the appropriate programs to deal with women’s specific barriers in the business world.

U.S. MDPs’ insufficient consideration of women’s social environmental conversion factors in their program designs is problematic. Without challenging structural discrimination, which weakens women’s human, financial, and social capital compared to men’s, U.S. MDPs do not seem to fulfill their underlying goal: lifting marginalized women out of poverty.

Effectiveness

According to Sen, the ultimate purpose of considering conversion factors of people is to improve their capabilities to achieve their desirable functionings. Thus, the next step is to evaluate whether MDPs are making contributions to improving women’s capabilities related to self-sufficiency and gender equality. Among many studies that have attempted to measure the effectiveness of U.S. MDPs since the 1990s, only a few have directly evaluated the effectiveness of U.S. MDPs with women clients (Dumas, 1999, 2010; Himes, Servon, & ACCION International, 1998; Raheim & Alter, 1995; Raheim & Bolden, 1995; Sanders, 2004; Spalter-Roth, Soto, & Zandniapour, 1994).

A relatively large number of studies have reported that U.S. MDPs have been a viable option for low-income women (Dumas, 1999, 2010; Raheim & Alter, 1995; Raheim & Bolden, 1995). Raheim and Alter (1995) evaluated the economic gains of participants of the Self-Employment Investment Demonstration (SEID) by interviewing 120 participants. According to their study, 55% responded that they earned their primary income through a job or business after participating in SEID. Unfortunately, this study lacked a control or comparison group, so it was difficult to ascertain whether SEID was indeed effective.

In addition to gains in income, gains in knowledge, greater psychological empowerment, and increases in social networks have been reported by women participants of U.S. MDPs. Dumas (1999, 2010) conducted in-depth interviews with the women participants of the First Track FastTrac program and Community Entrepreneurs Program of the Center for Women and Enterprise. The participants reported that they achieved positive changes in their knowledge about business, critical thinking skills to assess their ideas, self-esteem, empowerment, and a supportive social network, as well as income gains. It is interesting that in her research on the First Track FastTrac program, Dumas (1999) found that 88% of the respondents intended to start a home-based business. However, unlike Ehlers and Main (1998), Dumas (1999) found that a home-based business was a women’s rational choice to avoid the glass ceiling, to obtain greater flexibility, and to have shorter working hours. Despite her emphasis on the importance of women’s empowerment through MDPs, Dumas did not pay attention to gender-segregated labor divisions reinforced by MDPs, which encourage women to start a home business. Servon (1996) also reported that U.S. MDPs have contributed to women’s empowerment. She evaluated WISE clients’ empowerment by using a case study from a survey, in-depth interviews, and observations. She reported that nearly 50% of the participants in the WISE program reported increases in the indicators of empowerment, such as self-esteem, career options, work skills, and the potential for success.

In contrast to studies that did not use a comparison group, Raheim and Bolden (1995) compared the microenterprise approach with job training programs. After reviewing studies on job training programs and MDPs in the United States, they criticized most of the job training programs under the Welfare-to-Work programs as providing only low-paying and pink-collar jobs that reinforce gender discriminatory work structures. In contrast, they argued that MDPs provide a potential for low-income women to acquire independence from male-controlled workplaces and the welfare system by offering independent businesses and income gains. However, Raheim and Bolden reviewed only the positive evaluations of U.S. MDPs to support the microenterprise approach for low-income women, such as Project Match. In addition, they did not review the arguments that U.S. MDPs also reinforce gender-segregated job markets by encouraging women to start home-based and pink-collar businesses as do job training programs. Thus, their study did not provide sufficient evidence for supporting the greater effectiveness of U.S. MDPs for women compared to job training programs.

Compared to Raheim and Bolden’s (1995) study, Sanders’ (2004) study provided more sophisticated evidence to determine the effect of MDPs compared to other programs. Sanders (2004) compared the income gains of low-income women who participated in U.S. MDPs, low-income female microentrepreneurs who had never participated in MDPs, and low-income women who were employed wage workers from 1991 to 1995. She found that the self-employed groups did not achieve significant income gains from their businesses, nor were MDP participants more likely to escape poverty than their counterpart groups. From this latter finding, Sanders raised doubts whether U.S. MDPs are antipoverty programs. In addition, she concluded that this finding indicates that low-income women strive to escape poverty regardless of their job sectors. This conclusion suggests that women’s social environmental conversion factors, such as being trapped in the secondary labor market regardless of job sector, are perhaps a partial explanation of the lack of differences in economic outcomes among different groups.

Using in-depth and focus-group interviews with female participants in the MDPs, Spalter-Roth, Soto, and Zandniapour (1994) found that more than half the interviewees indicated that MDPs had not increased their standard of living and that another 5% reported that their standard of living became lower after training. However, the findings did not adequately explain why the women did not consider MDPs to be effective in improving their incomes and standards of living.

Discussion

This article has reviewed studies on women-centered U.S. MDPs by applying Sen’s capability approach, which focuses primarily on analyzing conversion factors to change people’s resources into different functionings and on people’s ability to achieve their immediate and long-term goals (Sen, 1997). In particular, it examined studies that shed light on what kinds of women’s conversion factors are relevant to the performance of MDPs. Finally, it examined whether women-centered U.S. MDPs are appropriate in terms of reflecting on women’s distinct conversion factors in their programs and how effective women-centered U.S. MDPs are in terms of assisting women to improve self-sufficiency and equality.

The review found that many researchers have argued that women’s lack of financial, human, and social capital have functioned as main barriers to women’s success in businesses in the United States compared to men’s. Moreover, these barriers were mainly attributed to structural discrimination against women, such as gender-segregated labor markets and the persistent inequality in the distribution of domestic and caring labor. According to Sen, women’s lack of financial, human, and social capital and structural gender discrimination could be identified as conversion factors of women in relation to their performance in U.S. microenterprises. The existence of women’s distinct conversion factors compared to men’s provides a clear rationale for MDPs only for women clients in the United States. Women-centered MDPs need to provide gender-sensitive training programs that focus on strengthening women’s financial, human, and social capitals and on challenging structural gender discrimination. This review found that U.S. women-centered MDPs have attempted to provide gender-sensitive programs for strengthening women’s human and social capitals. However, a considerable number of studies have argued that women-centered U.S. MDPs have not sufficiently addressed the structural barriers that have caused women’s distinct financial, human, and social capitals in their programs.

From the perspective of Sen’s conversion factors, a number of women-centered U.S. MDPs do not reflect women’s social environmental conversion factors, such as gender role and power relation (Robeyns, 2000), in their training programs for women. However, if women’s lack of financial, human, and social capitals compared to men’s is attributed to social environmental conversion factors in a patriarchal society, such as gender role and power relations, women-centered MDPs should provide women participants with gender-sensitive programs that challenge existing social environmental conversion factors. In this regard, I suggest that researchers, policy developers, and social workers related to U.S. MDPs apply a gender-sensitive analysis and intervention to their research, policies, programs, and practices (Dworkin & Ehrhardt, 2007). A gender-sensitive analysis needs to focus on investigating how traditional gender roles and power relations in women’s households and society constitute women’s preference for starting up businesses that are congruent with doing housework and caring and focus on identifying whether MDPs sufficiently reflect women’s distinct needs in their program levels.

The findings of this review also have major policy implications related to women-centered MDPs for the U.S. government and social workers of these MDPs to realize gender-sensitive intervention. First, the government needs to create strategies to encourage more women to start businesses in nontraditional women’s fields and to provide women-centered MDPs with newly designed training programs and resources in collaboration with the Small Business Administration. Second, the government needs to provide more funds to assist women-centered MDPs. According to Langowitz et al. (2006), funding problems were the greatest challenge for WBCs and were an important reason for providing only low levels of skill development and technological training for women. Furthermore, the government needs to provide subsidies for establishing on-site child care service facilities in women-centered MDPs, so as to relieve women’s child care burdens and help women invest enough time in their training.

In addition, this review has implications for social work practice. Raheim and Bolden (1995) argued that social workers need to understand the potential of MDPs for low-income women and to enhance their knowledge and practice to increase women’s access to these programs. However, the review indicated that their suggestions are not enough. Social workers of MDPs need to understand women participants’ distinct conversion factors and the special needs related to women’s lack of human, financial, and social capital and structural gender discriminations. In particular, they need to encourage women to participate in newly designed training programs that enable women to open their businesses in more profitable, sustainable, and nonfemale traditional sectors.

Finally, this review leads to some suggestions for further research. First, although a relatively large number of studies indicated that women-centered U.S. MDPs have been effective in improving women’s income and psychological empowerment, the studies on the effectiveness of women-centered U.S. MDPs lacked methodological rigor, such as using a comparison or control group. Therefore, more rigorous empirical research is needed to verify the effectiveness of women-centered U.S. MDPs. Second, the review found that there is little empirical research to verify the extent to which gender-sensitive programs of women-centered U.S. MDPs (appropriateness) increase the effectiveness of the programs in terms of improving women participants’ self-sufficiency and equality (effectiveness). Thus, additional evidence-based research that demonstrates the relationship between the appropriateness of programs and the effectiveness of women-centered U.S. MDPs is needed.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

The author would like to express her deepest gratitude to Mary Keegan Eamon, Jun Sung Hong, Steve Anderson, Min Zhan, Cynthia Kehoe, and Gale Summerfield for their feedback and support, which contributed to this article.

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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Evaluations of Women-Centered U.S. Microenterprise Development Programs

Abstract

Keywords

Historical Context of MDPs in the United States

Sen’s Capability Approach

Functioning and Capability

Conversion Factors

The Capability Approach and MDPs

Research Questions and Criteria for Selection

Review of the Conversion Factors of Women

Financial Capital

Human Capital

Social Capital

Appropriateness and Effectiveness of U.S. MDPs for Women

Appropriateness

Effectiveness

Discussion

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

References