Female Empowerment: Impact of a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines

Female empowerment has increasingly become a policy goal, both as an end to itself and as a means to achieve other development goals Microfinance in particular has often been argued but not without controversy to be a tool for empowering women Here, using a randomized controlled trial, we examine whether access to and marketing of an individually held commitment savings product lead to an increase in female decision-making power within the household We find positive impacts, particularly for women who have below median decision-making power in the baseline, and we find this leads to a shift toward female-oriented durables goods purchased in the household (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved