Empowering Women Through Income Generating Projects: Evidence From Indonesia Tri Lisiani Prihatinah, Dora Marinova and Laura Stocker Introduction Most feminists believe that income generating projects are a practical solution to empowering women and one of the strategies to strengthen women’s positions (Overholt et al., 1991). Involving women in a project, therefore, should be an important policy for government and development organisations because women as actors, rather than victims, can drastically change their own lives. According to Gionetten et al. (1994), women not only manage economic activities better than men, but also use the economic resources more wisely and to the benefit of the entire household. Nevertheless, they have a bleak economic presence in the developing world. This paper examines the Indonesian government’s efforts to empower women by establishing and running economic schemes aimed at alleviating poverty. The first section describes the schemes’ objectives and management. The part to follow analyses the ways women have used the financial support received from the government, the difficulties they have experienced in using the schemes and the hopes they have for their improvement. The last section presents recommendations, which will help make the schemes more successful and consequently will lead to positive changes in poor women’s economic situation. Objectives of the schemes “Prosperous Family Saving” (TAKESRA/“Tabungan Kesejahteraan Rakyat”) and “Prosperous Family Business Credit” (KUKESRA/“Kredit Keluarga Sejahtera”) which have been running since 1995 in Indonesia, are two government schemes aiming at promoting better family economic status and alleviating poverty. Both schemes give priority to poor women in rural areas. TAKESRA is a scheme from the central government which objective is to initiate saving awareness through providing basic saving amongst poor families (TAKESRA’s Guidelines, 1997, 2). After being registered at a bank with a savings account and becoming a member of a family income generating project (or UPPKS group/“usaha peningkatan pendapatan keluarga sejahtera”), families are allowed to join KUKESRA. This scheme provides a loan to the value of ten times the family’s savings. The loan can be obtained at five stages (please, refer to Table 1) from 4 months up to a year. A prerequisite for moving onto the next stage is that at least 75% (preferably, 100%) of the existing loan are repaid. There is a month tolerance after the expiry date of the loan within which installments are also accepted. The main objective of KUKESRA is to encourage families to develop their own businesses, which in the long run will make them “prosperous” (the way the latter is used in the government’s jargon is to mean taking families above the poverty line).