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Over the past decade, increasing the number of minorities engaged in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and careers has been a chief concern in the United States. However, minority students continue to be less likely to complete degrees in engineering and the physical sciences when compared to White students. Considering the growing minority population in the U.S., this trend is fast becoming a major issue for the engineering workforce as well as higher education institutions and programs committed to preparing students to be successful engineers. Now more than ever, in addition to enrolling a significant portion of Black college students, it has become critical that HBCUs take the lead on improving the retention of Black students in engineering and also in reversing the downward trend of male enrollment and graduation in engineering. In efforts to accomplish this, it is important to better understand the issues that help or hinder Black students’ success in the environments where they are preparing to become engineers. Within-race stereotyping is an unexpected phenomenon found to occur in predominately Black higher education settings that has been found to help (stereotype lift) or hinder (stereotype threat) African American students’ academic performance. The cultural ecological theory focuses on within-group differences among Black students and suggests that the way in which Black subgroups achieve their minority status impacts their academic achievement. Specifically, the cultural ecological theory draws distinctions between involuntary (e.g., African American) and voluntary (e.g., international Black) minorities. Essentially, as Black students strive for academic success, “they are required to reposition their Black cultural identity in a way that creates discontinuity of the self [...]”. Achievement differences are attributed to differences in one’s ability to effectively reposition or adjust to maximize “the educational fit between the student’s qualities and the multidimensional character and requirements of learning environments”. The historically Black university from which the sample for this study is drawn has been a leader in producing engineers from underrepresented minority groups, particularly African Americans. This university has awarded more than 9,000 Bachelor of Science degrees in STEM fields and first year student retention to the sophomore level is approximately 50% annually. While across the nation, international students account for approximately four percent of the college and university student body, this percentage is greater for STEM majors specifically. For example, at this university, international students represent nearly eleven percent of all STEM students. In 2009, the enrollment in engineering consisted of 386 undergraduates (248 males and one-third are international students). Lastly, at this university, the male to female ratio among engineering students approximately 2:1, but in in most US engineering schools men outnumber women 4:1. 

The loss of biodiversity affects everyone. The degree to which degraded resources impacts an individual depends on several key factors including economic status and gender. However, because women represent the vast majority of the world’s poor, women are ultimately impacted more severely than men with regards to natural resource degradation.

The availability of open access and common resource property is instrumental for obtaining sustenance and resources with which to generate income. As these resource bases disappear, the rural poor, particularly women, face increasing levels of poverty and their security is jeopardized (including food, water, energy, economic and health security). In general, household burdens are increased, poverty is increased, and health is diminished. These resource pools are lost for a variety of systematic reasons as well as external pressures such as demographic changes, economic growth, and climate change. 

Over half of the world’s poor live in rural areas. Despite recent increases in migration toward urban centers, the correlation between poverty and remoteness remains strong and is predicted to be significant in most countries over the long term. Rural people are often isolated from economic opportunities, have less access to basic social services, and therefore rely heavily on goods and services derived from biodiversity and ecosystems.

In rural areas, while land-owners often receive the greatest benefit from increased productivity and farming yields, yet even land-owning households often cannot derive all of their survival needs by farming alone. Forests enable the rural poor to conduct activities such as gathering firewood, preparing charcoal, fishing, hunting, collecting materials for making handicrafts and accessing non-timber forest products such as medicinal plants, fruits, and rubber. Near shore and coastal systems enable activities such as the gathering firewood (mangroves), fishing for fin and non fin fishes, collecting ornamental materials for handicrafts, accessing building materials, and utilizing fresh water resources.

Because poor people rely disproportionately on the goods and services that are provided by the natural world for food, water, medicine, and fuel, they are disproportionately impacted by the loss of natural resources. Further, biological resources make up a larger proportion of the ‘wealth’ of developing countries and are the basis upon which development can be built ( irish aid). Therefore, the loss of biodiversity not only undermines food, health and water security, and diminishes energy security it also increases the vulnerability and decreases resiliency of the poor to external forces such as climate change, rapid demographic shifts, and impacts from economic growth. 

Gender and environmental issues are linked in several different ways. First, women represent a disproportionate percentage of the world’spoor. Although still not clearly quantified, it is largely held that over 70% of the worlds chronically poor are women. Second, women and men use natural resources differently and to different extents to accomplish their defined roles in the community. Finally, men and women are treated differently under legal, political and social regimes and such treatment has implications for their ability to manage resources effectively.

Because of the inherent connectedness between poverty, biodiversity use, and gender and the mutually self-reinforcing nature of these links, addressing rural poverty and environmental degradation requires a holistic, multidisciplinary approach and an understanding of gender in order to achieve successful sustained results. Conservation efforts that exclude communities and specifically women in those communities, fail to identify and deal with gender differences, or prohibit the ability of individuals to access resources for sustenance and livelihoods will be unsustainable in the long term and will contribute to increased poverty, inequality, and resource degradation. Further, development efforts that fail to recognize the link between communities and robust, healthy, biodiverse systems will ultimately fail in their ability to alleviate poverty in the long term. Conversely, improvements in poverty, equality, or biodiversity can leverage improvements in the other two arenas.  

Over the past three decades or so, there has been significant interest on the role of microfinance in promoting socio-economic development, especially in developing countries. Of particular importance to this trend has been the well-documented emphasis on how microfinance can shape gender relations, empower women and ultimately address gender inequality. Many researchers and practitioners have argued that providing access to credit for women is a quintessential approach to strengthening their bargaining position within the household (Guérin, 2010). Others have also stressed the point that microfinance serves as an avenue to developing income-generating activities which could release women from power structures in which their lives are domiciled (Khandker, 2003; Pitt et al., 2006).

While the role of microfinance has almost unquestionably been hailed, we also need to ask the extent to which micro credit shapes gender relations in developing societies. In this review, we aim to bring to the fore a more nuanced perspective relating to the certainty held in the mainstream academic literature and policy circles regarding microfinance and women empowerment discourse. We focus specifically on examining the role of microfinance in shaping gender relations.  

Micro-finance programs targeting women have become the central means of donor poverty alleviation strategies. In view of the renewed focus on post-millennium development goals (MDGs) poverty reduction strategies, there is the likelihood that donor agencies might increase funding in the next coming decades to support different initiatives. In this paper, we critically review the evidence of the nexus of microfinance and gender inequality in developing societies. One aim for providing and reaching out to women with credit methodologies is to increase women’s bargaining power and challenging existing gender subordination thereby releasing them from power structures which dominate their lives. This paper suggests that relying on microfinance alone, as a strategy in addressing gender inequality in developing societies is insufficient. Drawing on several empirical cases on the microfinance literature from numerous contexts, we show that the empowerment potentials of microfinance schemes in addressing gender inequality are not straightforward. Failure to incorporate other household members (men) and a lack of recognition of the socio-cultural elements in societies constrains the empowerment potentials of microfinance programs. We conclude by suggesting pathways for improving the design and implementation of microfinance schemes in relation to addressing gender inequality in post-2015 development era. 

There is a dearth of evidence to support the claim that microfinance schemes offer a means in empowering poorer women groups although actual empowerment does not follow a straight course. The purported areas of economic, enhanced decision-making and wellbeing as well as social or political empowerment are ambiguous and show uneven outcome. Our review also suggests that challenges of loan repayment, the financial sustainability paradigm, a lack of gender strategy to incorporate men and explain the agenda behind given credit to women as well as little recognition of the cultural context have all contributed to worsening the plights of poor women groups. In view of the renewed focus on post-MDGs and poverty reduction strategies, the following recommendations are proposed in the design of microfinance schemes. The relevance of the larger social matrix suggests that microfinance needs to be designed not only as an economic model but also as a holistic approach to development, in which the role of culture becomes essential.  

Despite the existence of a range of a range of instruments that prohibit discrimination against women in international law, such discrimination remains pervasive in all spheres of life. It may result from laws that are themselves discriminatory. More often, however, the discrimination women face is the result of social norms or customs, linked to certain stereotypes about gender roles; unequal access to productive resources such as land and to economic opportunities, such as decent wage employment; unequal bargaining position within the household; gendered division of labor within households, that result both in time poverty for women and in lower levels of education; and women’s marginalization from decision-making spheres at all levels.

This report argues that only by addressing these different forms of discrimination, including by challenging the existing distribution of family responsibilities between women and men, shall the root causes of the discrimination women face be effectively addressed. It describes a cycle of discrimination in which disempowerment of women results in women being less economically independent, being exposed to violence and having a weaker bargaining position within the household and the community. As a result, they continue to assume a highly unequal share of tasks and family responsibilities within the household − taking care of the children and the elderly or the sick, fetching wood and water, buying and preparing the food: in middle-income countries, this unpaid care work would represent the equivalent of 15 per cent of the GDP if it were to be valued in monetary terms; and the figure is 35 per cent for low-income countries. If this unpaid care work were to be financed by the public purse, it would represent 94 per cent of the total tax revenue of South Korea, and 182 per cent of the total tax revenue of India.

This “care economy” for which they remain chiefly responsible results in time poverty for women. Women work more hours than men, although much of the work they perform remains informal, essentially performed within the family, and unremunerated, and thus is neither valued nor recognized. This leads to lower levels of education for women, and an inability to seek better employment opportunities outside the home. They may also be discouraged from improving their qualifications because of the lack of such opportunities, due to the discrimination they are confronted with in the labour market. This may further feed into negative prejudices about their ability to perform as well as men. The lack of recognition of reproductive rights is part of this cycle: marrying early means having children early, and having to take care of them, even though this may interrupt the education of the mother, or make it difficult or impossible for her to seek employment. It is this cycle of discrimination that must be broken