**6. Conclusions**

Microcredit has been seen as the most powerful tool to empower women and reduce poverty because it provides lending, which helps a poor woman to increase her earnings and status in society and home. This study aims to measure the graduation level of women in terms of poverty using the poverty scorecard tool and to assess the impact of interestfree microfinance on empowering women socially, economically, politically, and on the health and education of their families. The findings show that women in the treatment group are likely to be older and have significantly larger household size and more income earners than the control group in the unmatched sample. Moreover, respondents in the treatment group have a higher income and consumption range than the control group and the difference is statistically significant in both unmatched and matched samples. Furthermore, respondents in the treatment group have higher total assets value in an unmatched and matched sample, whereas respondents in the treatment group have also purchased assets more in the unmatched sample as compared to the control group thus participation in microfinance increases the value of their total assets. Similarly, the number

of children of respondents attending school is significantly greater in the unmatched sample and has attained a higher grade level in the treatment group than in the control group in both samples. However, the percentage of social empowerment, economic empowerment, political participation, and control over major resources in the unmatched sample and political awareness in the matched sample is significantly higher in the treatment group as compared to the control group. Percentage of say in decision making, mobility, ownership of household assets, control over minor resources and an overall composite of empowerment is significantly higher in the treatment group as compared to the control group in both samples.

Secondly, the results of the study sugges<sup>t</sup> that microcredit has positively impacted women beneficiaries in terms of reduced poverty and improved their family wellbeing. The family rosters in poverty scorecard indicate that beneficiaries are purchasing productive assets or income-generating assets such as sewing machines, cattle and so on and sending their children to schools. Although 72% of beneficiaries (treatment group) have graduated from one poverty band to another higher band than 59.4% non-beneficiaries (control group) in poverty score, their graduation does not confirm their wellbeing and lower poverty because initial three bands (see Table 5) of poverty score still implicate the score of respondents below the poverty line. Thus, the real graduation was considered if the respondents have graduated in the last three bands (see Table 5) of the poverty scorecard, which is 38% in the treatment group and 34.8% in the control group. Furthermore, results of the logistic regression analysis illustrate that the involvement of the CIF program does empower rural women of Sindh, Pakistan but the empowerment process does not necessarily occur simultaneously across all dimensions. Women's participation in the CIF program increases women's ownership of household assets and income, say in decision making, mobility outside the home, socio-economic empowerment and composite empowerment. Despite the CIF program, occupation types, i.e., labour and SME owners have also a strong impact on women empowerment in the perspective of socio-economic and composite empowerment as a whole whereas housewives have low social empowerment. Similarly, literate women are more politically empowered as they have more access to information regarding politics and their rights as a citizen than illiterate women. Based on the findings of the study, policymakers, donors, governmen<sup>t</sup> and other stakeholders will be able to make decisions on the investment for interest-free microfinance intervention. Furthermore, they should focus on other aspects such as education, employment opportunities for women and other social mobilization activities along with microfinance interventions for poverty reduction and empowerment.

**Author Contributions:** P.A.M. developed the idea and drafted the introduction of the study. M.R.K. designed research methodology, developed research tools for data collection and partially writing. K.T. contributed to the data collection and data analysis. P.S. contributed to the data collection and interpreted the results. S.S. contributed to the data collection and reviewed the paper. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** We received funding from the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (project number 77), which was utilized in collecting data from the respondents by visiting them in their different villages for this study.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
