Abstract

Sophia Khatoon, a 22-year-old highly skilled furniture-maker in the tiny village of Jobra in Bangladesh, worked seven long days a week, looked twice her age and lived in abject poverty. She made stools and chairs out of bamboo, which she had to sell to a moneylender who provided the credit to buy the raw material. The price she received barely covered the costs. Dr Yunus – Professor of Economics at the University in the Southern port city of Chittagong who later founded the Grameen Bank – calculated that effectively Sophia was paying interest at the rate of 10 per cent a day, more than 3,000 per cent a year. Yunus could not reconcile the fact that a woman with such excellent skills, who worked so hard, produced such beautiful bamboo furniture and created wealth at such a high rate was earning so little.