Empowerment of Rural Women Through Self Help Groups

Empowerment of Rural Women Through Self Help Groups
Author: B. Suguna
Publisher: Discovery Publishing House
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2006
Genre: Rural women
ISBN: 9788183560962

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.

Microfinance Challenges

Microfinance Challenges
Author: Isabelle Guérin
Publisher:
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2005
Genre: Microfinance
ISBN:

Contributed papers presented earlier in a conference.

Handbook of Research on Indigenous Knowledge and Bi-Culturalism in a Global Context

Handbook of Research on Indigenous Knowledge and Bi-Culturalism in a Global Context
Author: Hameed, Shahul
Publisher: IGI Global
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2019-02-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1522560629

Society is continually moving towards global interaction, and nations often contain citizens of numerous cultures and backgrounds. Bi-culturalism incorporates a higher degree of social inclusion in an effort to bring about social justice and change, and it may prove to be an alternative to the existing dogma of mainstream Europe-based hegemonic bodies of knowledge. The Handbook of Research on Indigenous Knowledge and Bi-Culturalism in a Global Context is a collection of innovative studies on the nature of indigenous bodies’ knowledge that incorporates the sacred or spiritual influence across various countries following World War II, while exploring the difficulties faced as society immerses itself in bi-culturalism. While highlighting topics including bi-cultural teaching, Africology, and education empowerment, this book is ideally designed for academicians, urban planners, sociologists, anthropologists, researchers, and professionals seeking current research on validating the growth of indigenous thinking and ideas.

The Role of Microfinance in Women's Empowerment

The Role of Microfinance in Women's Empowerment
Author: Raji Ajwani-Ramchandani
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2017-10-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1787144259

Delving into the effects of microfinance in both rural and urban communities, this book will be of interest to researchers of women studies, microfinance, and development economics.

Microcredit and women's empowerment

Microcredit and women's empowerment
Author: Samjhana Wagle
Publisher: Cook Communication
Total Pages: 129
Release: 2020-08-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

Micro-credit has been taken as a prominent tool for poverty alleviation and women's empowerment. This book has presented the double-edged claim of microcredit proponents that microcredit not only supports rural poor to come out of poverty, it also empowers poor rural women in particular. This book is mainly grounded on research based on Bandipur Rural Municipality of Nepal. It has made the study of women from 3 settlements of Bandipur, who had availed microcredit facilities from some microcredit providing institutions or organizations in Bandipur. The data has been analyzed through qualitative data analysis under which both descriptive and explanatory methods. The data analysis is made on the basis of caste/ethnic group. The results showed that most of the females who availed the facility of microcredit finally got socioeconomic empowerment through acquiring the access to capital, control over resources, self-esteem, confidence level, decision making power, etc. Results are varied on Dalit, Janajati and Brahmin/Chhetri women. The findings showed that microcredit has significant impact on the upliftment of socio-economic empowerment of the borrowers of Bandipur. The income pattern of the respondent women has been changed. Daily wage earning and agricultural production were the main source of income before joining the program but after joining the microcredit program the sources of income shifted to small scale business, sale of livestock product and agricultural product. Entrepreneurship in microcredit beneficiary women has been increased. Apart from the changing income pattern, role of women in decision making about the resources mobilization for household activities, participation in societal affairs has also been increased. The economic dependency had restricted women in decision making power in all the spheres not only economical but also in other family and social affairs. But it has been changed now. Since, women are capable to generate regular income from their small enterprises; their dependency on male for money is reduced. Women's confidence and social status has increased after involvement in MC programs. Microcredit, though an effective poverty alleviating instrument, is not suitable for all categories of the poor. For those trapped in chronic poverty, no assets base to protect themselves from the countless webs of shocks, microcredit can be ineffective and sometimes counterproductive. Some cases of Dalit settlement have proved it.

Women's Entrepreneurship and Microfinance

Women's Entrepreneurship and Microfinance
Author: Chiranjib Neogi
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2018-03-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9811042683

This book offers a critical perspective on the issues related to women’s empowerment, microfinance, and entrepreneurship in India. Written by distinguishing experts in this field, this book highlights women’s empowerment, which is a process of entrusting power to an individual on the control over resources and decisions. However, these two factors are less effective in a society where religion and cultural dominance is high. The book sheds light on the social security measures undertaken by the government aiming to the right to work helped women who are bounded by social restrictions. Over time there is a shift in rural occupational structure towards non-farm activities, which is largely distress driven self-employment. Access to credit is a great source to provide self-employment that develops self-esteem among women and uplift their position. The book highlights the discrimination against women entrepreneurs in access to credit led to gender biased entrepreneurial society. Association with self-help groups (SHGs) has made women more socially empowered. SHG members help them to change their life in a positive manner through micro-entrepreneurial activities. The book has emphasized on the role of microfinance, which has served the poor to become financially self-reliant. It is observed that for second generation borrowers, the impact of microfinance seems to fizzle out, where MFIs who are gaining efficiency are diverting their objective of servicing poor, signalling a sign of mission drift.

Sustainability of a Government Targeted Credit Program

Sustainability of a Government Targeted Credit Program
Author: Shahidur R. Khandker
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 114
Release: 1995-01-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780821335161

World Bank Technical Paper No. 304. Reviews the status and availability in developing countries of photovoltaic (PV) technology and looks at the prospects for using this technology in light of current energy use and costs of other energy sources. The report provides the necessary background information and highlights the questions raised and the calculations that must be made whenever PV applications are being considered in the developing world

Social networks, mobility, and political participation: The potential for women’s self-help groups to improve access and use of public entitlement schemes in India

Social networks, mobility, and political participation: The potential for women’s self-help groups to improve access and use of public entitlement schemes in India
Author: Kumar, Neha
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Total Pages: 53
Release: 2018-08-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

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.

Beyond Micro-credit

Beyond Micro-credit
Author: Thomas Fisher
Publisher: Oxfam
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2002
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780855984885

Beyond Micro-Credit sets out how Indian Micro-Finance Initiatives are combining micro-finance with a wide range of development goals, these include not only poverty alleviation through providing savings, credit and insurance services but also promoting livelihoods, empowering women, building people's organizations and changing institutions.