Chapter One Deconstructing Self - Employment : Toward a Framework of Analysis The Development Context 5 Why the Convergence on Self - Employment 7 The Self - Employment Debate 8

Micro-enterprise credit programs are coming to be seen as an important innovation in economic development both in developing countries and, more recently, in the United States. The Grameen Bank in Bangladesh has been operating a decentralized village credit program since 1976 which has achieved impressive results making non-collateralized loans to the rural poor. Currently, a handful of organizations in the U.S. are engaged in a collaborative effort to adapt the Grameen model to urban and rural communities in the U.S. The Women's Self-Employment Project is the first non-profit organization to adapt the Grameen credit program in an effort to meet the needs of low-income women in Chicago. This thesis evaluates the Grameen model and the U.S. experiment in replication. It raises questions about Grameen's social and economic accomplishments and the promise and limitations of its replicability in the Chicago urban context. Micro-economic and labor market conditions, institutional linkages to the public sector, and the particular conditions that lead to changes in women's social status are analyzed as a basis for comparison and evaluation.