Empowerment Of Women Through Self Help Groups

All over the world there is a realization that the best way to tackle poverty and enable the community to improve its quality of life is through social mobilization of poor, especially women into Self Help Groups. Ever since Independence a number of innovative schemes have been launched for the upliftment of women in our country. Indian Government has taken lot of initiatives to strengthen the institutional rural credit system and development programmes. Viewing it in the welfare programmes of Ninth Five Year Plan (1997-2002) and shifting the concept of Development to Empowerment. The Indian Government adopted the approach of Self Help Groups (SHGs) to uplift the rural women. The empowerment of women through Self Help Groups (SHGs) would lead to benefits not only to the individual woman and women groups but also the families and community as a whole through collective action for development. The book will be highly useful to students of social studies especially Women Studies, Social Work, Sociology, Economics and also to the students and research scholars specialising in Human Development and NGO s and also other functionaries dealing with women.

In India, the advancement and empowerment of women has been a leading objective of state policy ever since the attainment of independence in 1947. Institutions of different types - central, state, and local governments; non-governmental organizations; civil society; and other bodies - are active to ensure gender equality as laid down in the Constitution of India. India's Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007-2012) recognizes women for the first time not just as equal citizens, but as agents of economic and social growth. The Plan's approach to gender equity is based on the recognition that interventions in favor of women must be multi-pronged and that they must be provided with basic entitlements. Self-help Groups (SHGs) have emerged as an effective instrument to promote entrepreneurship and self-confidence among women, particularly in rural areas. This book provides a vivid account of the various measures taken by the government of India for the economic, social, and political empowerment of women. More importantly, it examines the role of SHGs in women's development, thereby envisaging a synthesis of the formal financial system and informal sector.

The book is an in-depth study of Empowerment of Women Through Self Help Groups. It covers the problems and perspectives of Self Help Groups and suggest several measures. The study has evaluated the implementation of several schemes in Anantapur District in particular and in Andhra Pradesh in general such as rearing goats, dairying, petty business activities, making of soft toys and so on. The findings are very much encouraging, such as Women are now managing their families, Panchayat Raj Institutions, are able to concentrate on their children s education and health. Contents include: Introduction, Public Policy Theoretical Perspectives, Evaluation, Aims and Objectctives of Self Help Groups in Anantapur District, Socio-Economic Background of the Sample Study, Problems and perspectives of Self Help Groups, Performance of Self Help Groups and Conclusion. This outstanding Text-cum-Reference book will be of great use to Scholars, Administrators, Planners, Policy-makers, Statesmen and Students of Political Science, Economics, Sociology, Commerce and Women Studites.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [175]-179) and index.

Women’s self-help groups (SHGs) have increasingly been used as a vehicle for social, political, and economic empowerment as well as a platform for service delivery. Although a growing body of literature shows evidence of positive impacts of SHGs on various measures of empowerment, our understanding of ways in which SHGs improve awareness and use of public services is limited. To fill this knowledge gap, this paper first examines how SHG membership is associated with political participation, awareness, and use of government entitlement schemes. It further examines the effect of SHG membership on various measures of social networks and mobility. Using data collected in 2015 across five Indian states and matching methods to correct for endogeneity of SHG membership, we find that SHG members are more politically engaged. We also find that SHG members are not only more likely to know of certain public entitlements than non-members, they are significantly more likely to avail of a greater number of public entitlement schemes. Additionally, SHG members have wider social networks and greater mobility as compared to non-members. Our results suggest that SHGs have the potential to increase their members’ ability to hold public entities accountable and demand what is rightfully theirs. An important insight, however, is that the SHGs themselves cannot be expected to increase knowledge of public entitlement schemes in absence of a deliberate effort to do so by an external agency.

The women's SHG model is a home grown Indian model.Based on the principles of self-help, self-management, self-responsibility and self-reliance, the groups were mobilized by promoting institutions (often NGOs).The self help promoting institutions found that saving and loans could be the binding factor for groups to remain active and pursue their own agenda. NABARD launched a pilot to link SHGs to banks in 1992 which provided these institutions with a boost. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) permitted banks to open saving accounts in the name of informal SHGs and lend to those groups without cash collateral and without asking for the purpose of the loan. Since 1996, SHG banking has been recognized as regular banking activity. In the process SHGs emerged as mass movement across the country and the largest community based micro finance model in the world.Two decades of the SHG movement has demonstrated positive impact on poverty. The model offers great potential to have millions of member-owned, member-managed and member-used organizations of the poor. In a nutshell this book is highly useful for those who want to do further research on SHGs & women empowerment.

Papers presented at a seminar on 12th September 2004; in Indian context; with special reference to Orissa.

The general meaning of the term 'empowerment' is giving to individuals of power to take decisions in matters relating to themselves in relation to self-development1. Garden feels, 'the individual is an effect of power, and at the same time, repressively to the extent to which it is that effect, it is the element of its articulation. The individual with power has constituted, is at the same time its vehicle'2. According to Chandra Shanti Kohli (1997) empowerment in its simplest form means, the manifestation of redistribution of power that challenges patriarchal ideology and the male dominance.