The reading and the listening passagelecture passages talk about the Microfinancemicrofinance, a form of bank loan which lends a small amount of money to people who havewith financial difficulties. The reading passage explores the positive aspects, while the lecture outlines the negative ones.

The reading passage describes Microfinancemicrofinance as an international movement which provideprovides money in the form of small loans to people with financial problems,difficulties; in particularlyparticular, to women. In theThe reading passage is explainedexplains that the only criteriumcriterion to obtain a financial support is to bebeing impoverished. In fact, the more impoverished a person is, the more qualified she is considered to be to receive money. This movement focuses especially on helping women, because they are more expected to lift their families out of poverty and educate their children. Once they have improved their economieseconomic situation, they have to repay the debt. As the reading passage says, according to some studies, the majority of the borrowers devolve money.

The lectureslecture explores instead some negative issues about microfinance. First, the professor states that the original idea was borrowing money in a simple way,; however, the interest costs became very high. Moreover, women have access to lower interest loans than men. Secondly, the professor says that there are, of course, cases of borrowers who improved their lives, but there are also cases of poor people who got into more debt or that were encouraged to borrow more than they cancould afford. Finally, the lecture talks about the gender difference in returning money. While womenswomen are more likely to have more debt and don’tnot to repay, men are able to invest in capitals projects and return a small amount of money to the bank.