Table 1.
Personal Information of the Participants.
Table 2.
Participants’ Background Information.
Fig 1.
Themes conceptualizing the aim/objective of this research.
Five themes were identified from our data to explain the study findings, with four of these themes comprising several sub-themes. a) The first theme conceptualizes the understanding of purdah; b) the second theme shows how purdah norms escalate debt burden for female loanees; c) the third theme contains the impact of purdah on microfinance beneficiaries by letting men take control over female loans; d) the fourth theme left evidence on purdah practice as a normative practice for women before and after marriage; e) the fifth theme showed how purdah placed as a normative restriction against women’s mobility beyond home.
Fig 2.
Purdah norm and its influence on microfinance loans.
This fig illustrates that purdah norms are culturally learned, practiced, and passed down through generations, which subjects women to restrictions on mobility and financial control, while men face the opposite situation. Due to their lack of financial control and mobility, women’s microfinance loans were transferred to men. Men utilize the funds for income generation or consumption. However, loan repayment remains a legal obligation for women to MFIs, which can potentially worsen women’s debt burden if men fail to properly repay the loan installments associated with women’s loans.