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Nation's all over development and growth can be attained when women is treated equivalent to men in the progress of an economy. Rural poverty is the main drawback for women empowerment in rural area. Empowering women by providing financial assistance, awareness about self-employment and independence in making decision can alleviate rural poverty. For attaining women empowerment in rural areas Government and NGO's have taken initiation by forming Self-help groups since, from last four decades. The paper discusses about the schemes available in Government under the SHG's for promoting women empowerment. Secondary source was used in the study to know the performance of SHG's in Kalaburagi district, Karnataka. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role that SHGs (self-help groups) have played in the creation of 'civic growth' and changing electoral politics in India. Based on ethnographic engagement in a village in West Bengal before and after the formation of these groups, the impact of the transformative effect of these groups on women is placed in a wider political context. The activity of the SHG enabled horizontal solidarities to emerge despite the vertical divisions in village society and successfully challenge the status quo. It builds on a growing literature on women's empowerment and capacity for collective action through SHGs to show that the notion of 'empowerment' can be extended to include the capability for active citizenship and skills in how to do politics, what Arendt calls 'natality'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to look at India's experience in using the Self-Help Group Bank Linkage Programme as a core development strategy aimed to empower women. Self-help groups are seen as socially active groups that can facilitate a government's plans towards achieving the sustainable development goals. Today, the Self-Help Group Bank Linkage Programme is the largest microfinance programme globally, covering more than 10 million self-help groups. This article uses descriptive analysis to provide an overview of India's experience. It focuses on how the program contributes to sustainable development by asking how the Self-Help Group Bank Linkage Programme leads to the empowerment of rural women, the challenges faced in its implementation, and the initiatives implemented in India to sustain the programme. This is followed by a quantitative analysis of the economic sustainability and the equality status by measuring the programme's progress and the disparity between regions in the last decade. India's experience shows that the Self-Help Group Bank Linkage Programme can empower women, facilitate entrepreneurial activities, enhance confidence and trust, provide technical skills and market access. Those are part of sustainable development goals and increase sustainable livelihood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: While there is extensive published evidence regarding the effectiveness of the Care Group Approach in promoting community-wide health behavior change, there is no published evidence regarding its empowering effect on its participants. Our study aimed to understand if the Care Group Approach as applied in the Curamericas/Guatemala Maternal and Child Health Project in isolated rural mountainous communities in Guatemala produced evidence of empowerment among the female participants. This is the seventh of 10 papers describing the expanded Census-Based, Impact-Oriented (CBIO+) Approach in improving the health and well-being of mothers and children in the rural highlands of the Department of Huehuetenango, Guatemala. Methods: We conducted semi-structured individual and group interviews with 96 female Care Group participants –including Level-1 Care Group Promoters, Care Group Volunteers, and Self-Help Group participants. The participants were from six communities – two from each of the three municipalities making up the Project Area. Data were analyzed both using deductive thematic and by exploring the following social constructs: perceived social status, self-efficacy, decision-making autonomy, and formation of social capital. Results: The findings supported the hypothesis that Care Group participation was an empowering process. The primary themes that emerged included increased respect accorded to women in the community, women's willingness and ability to make decisions and their confidence in making those decisions, and the development of stronger bonds among Care Group members, with other community members, and with community leaders. Conclusion: Through increased theoretical and practical knowledge about important maternal and child health matters and through the social experience of obtaining this knowledge and sharing it with other community members, participation in the Care Group Approach empowered participants to make positive health behavior changes for themselves and for their children and families. This, in turn, led many participants to become more engaged in community activities for improved health and beyond, thereby enhancing social capital in the community. We conclude that the Care Group Approach, as applied in this setting, has made it possible for marginalized indigenous women living in a male-dominated society to become more empowered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Screening for breast cancer results in early diagnosis of the disease and improves survival. However, increasing participation of women in screening programs is challenging since it is influenced by socioeconomic and cultural factors. This study explores the relationship of socioeconomic and women empowerment factors with breast cancer screening uptakes in the states and union territories of India. Methods: We used summary reports of secondary data from all the states and union territories based on the fifth wave of the National Family Health Survey in India. This ecological study compares the uptake of breast cancer screening across states of India. We considered socioeconomic status (SES) and women empowerment status (WES) indicators from the survey as independent variables and state-wise breast cancer screening uptake as dependent variables for studying their association. The determinants of breast cancer screening were calculated using a simple linear regression model. Results: We found that socioeconomic status and women empowerment status moderately correlated with breast cancer screening uptake (correlation coefficient 0.34 and 0.38, respectively). States with higher rates of literacy among women and of women who had their own bank accounts that they decided how to use reported higher uptake of breast cancer screening (p = 0.01 and 0.03, respectively). However, the correlation was not uniform across all the states. The states of Chandigarh, Delhi, Telangana, and Karnataka showed lower participation despite a higher percentage of literate women and women with their own bank accounts. Conclusion: This study indicates that women's literacy and having their own bank account may moderately improve their participation in cancer screening. However, higher SES and WES did not translate into better screening in many of the states. More research is needed, especially for states which had low screening uptake despite relatively higher rates of women empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relation between the institutional frameworks and the promotion of gender equality, considering the corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement, has been scarcely analyzed from the experiences of developing economies. We aimed to contribute to fill that gap, bringing to the debate the concepts of emancipation in organizations and support groups. We asked: in which ways, gender equality fostered by initiatives implemented in developing economies by transnational corporations in the form of support groups allow for organizational transformations that strengthen the process of women's emancipation in the corporate world? So, an ethnography was undertaken within a transnational company of the financial sector that operates in Brazil. The results show that these initiatives can only lead to organizational transformations that strengthen women's empowerment if they are inscribed in an institutional framework that guarantees the participation of multiple actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unreliable supply and frequent failures of grid electricity are common in rural and disaster-prone areas in India. Furthermore, the households living below the poverty line have limited ability to pay the electricity charges regularly. Under these circumstances, access to clean and renewable energy is expected to provide significant socio-economic and environmental benefits vis-à-vis conventional energy sources, contributing to socially inclusive and sustainable development immensely. In particular, access to renewable energies in rural areas can potentially facilitate income-generating activities by the women and, hence, their socio-economic empowerment. Given this backdrop, the study examines if the socialization of solar energy through the installation of micro solar domes can lead to women empowerment in rural West Bengal. Two blocks, namely Hirbandh and Ranibandh, in the Bankura district are selected for carrying out detailed analysis. It is found that the MSDs seem to have improved users' standard of living and enhanced women's participation in the decision-making process along with their mobility, financial autonomy and social activities. Nevertheless, emphasis should be given to designing appropriate structures towards creating markets for such technologies for promoting socially inclusive cleaner energy transition. [Display omitted] • Examine the perceived impact of Micro Solar Dome on the socio-economic condition of beneficiaries. • The involvement of women Self Help Groups is crucial for rural energy transition programs. • Renewable energy access has effects on women empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a large body of literature investigating the impact of self-help groups (SHGs) on women, less detailed attention has been paid to the complicated relationship between SHGs and politics, beyond political 'awareness'. Based on qualitative on the ground research in West Bengal, this article shows that the relationship between politics and SHGs is highly complex, since political involvement in SHGs can create conflict and division in communities but also can provide unique opportunities for women. By drawing on theories of social exclusion and feminist literature on the public/private binary, this article argues that politics is critical in understanding how SHGs operate, particularly the way in which political exclusion through SHGs fuels ostracisation and conflict in communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the empowerment literature, "freedom of movement" or "mobility" are frequently used as indicators to assess empowerment programmes or whether women have become socially empowered. As women's self‐help groups (SHGs) engaged in saving/lending and livelihood schemes have emerged as the de facto vehicles for women's empowerment over the past two decades, their propensity for increasing women's opportunities for mobility has been an oft‐lauded benefit. This has been especially pronounced as the empowerment agenda's prerogative to collectively transform power structures became co‐opted by a neoliberal focus on fostering responsible financial subjects with entrepreneurial savvy. In this paper, I draw on multi‐year ethnographic research of women's SHG interventions in eastern and central India to critically explore the ways different mobile practices intersect with empowerment goals. I contend it is necessary to examine mobility as more than physical movement and also to analyse it as a meaning‐laden and embodied practice intimately bound up in the neoliberal development agenda. Using this analytic, I find that although newfound mobility is often experienced positively by women, it is far from "free," and remains embedded in power relations where women continue to engage on unfavourable terms – exemplified in women's inability to leisurely tour/wander. I conclude by reflecting on how empowerment interventions might more productively engage mobility less as a practice of increased economic and political participation and more as a site where women can experiment with new forms of being. Women's spatial mobility is seen as central to empowerment, yet remains undertheorised in critical and mainstream literature. This paper builds on scholarship examining how women navigate normative spaces of development through creative forms of self‐fashioning by analytically unpacking how mobility is central to these processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article studies the importance of social, political and economic empowerment of women belonging to self-help groups (SHGs) in achieving sustainable development. The study was conducted in the five districts of Punjab that includes Patiala, Bhatinda, Amritsar, Faridkot and Fazilka. Around 500 respondents were selected to fill the questionnaire comprising 100 respondents from each of the five districts. Data analysis and hypothesis testing have been done using IBM SPSS and AMOS. The results, obtained through structural equation modelling, reveal that women have become more authoritative socially and financially, yet there is still scope for upgrading with respect to political empowerment. Sustainable development can indeed be achieved through empowerment of rural women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to study the determinants of repayment performance of self-help groups in India's Uttar Pradesh state, which has one of the highest numbers of defaulting self-help groups. The study is based on primary data collected in 2017 through a field survey covering 300 members across 100 self-help groups from the rural areas of Sultanpur and Faizabad districts. The survey reveals an overall repayment rate of about 55% with better pay-back performance seen among members of old self-help groups. The results, computed with the help of the Tobit model, show that factors such as group maturity (age of the group), ratio of family workers to household size and household income are negatively associated with the incidence of delinquency while peer group pressure and social ties associate positively with delays and overdues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Despite international commitment and government policies and programmes, a vast majority of women of rural India are socially and economically deprived in the patriarchal sociocultural framework. Strategies to improve women empowerment need context-specific field-based evidence. Objectives: This study was undertaken to address the research question: "Are women with a higher level of social capital more empowered than their counterparts?" Methods: A community-based cross-sectional analytical study was carried out in the Wardha district of Maharashtra, where a two-stage cluster random sampling technique was used to select the 300 study subjects. The outcome variable, women empowerment was assessed using four domains: mobility, inter-spouse communication, household decision-making and asset ownership. The independent variables included social capital along with potential sociodemographic confounders. Multivariate linear regression was applied using the backward stepwise method. Results: The participants had better women empowerment percentage score in the "Household decision-making" domain compared to the other domains. The women empowerment score was found to be significantly higher in the participants with increasing age, higher education, those involved in business/service, above poverty line (ABL), nuclear family, married, and those having at least one living child. In the adjusted analysis, the social capital was found to be a significant determinant of women empowerment, along with age, education, religion, marital status and family type. Conclusion: The improvement of social capital in the form of community-based development projects through Self-Help Groups (SHG) and microfinance programmes need to be encouraged by the Government and NGOs, as this strategy has the potential to improve women empowerment through community-driven development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 73rd Amendment to the Constitution of India was introduced with a stated legislative intent of reserving not less than a third of seats for women in institutions of local self-government, the three-tier panchayati raj institutions. That amendment is considered a milestone in India's project of empowerment of women. This paper evaluates the power and prestige of the post of an adhyaksha (chairperson) of a zila (district) panchayat (council) in general, and in particular the status of women elected to the post during 2016 in the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP). Analysing the candidature, electoral success, electoral practices and subsequent functioning of zila panchayat adhyakshas (ZPAs), the authors argue that despite seats being reserved for women, no meaningful political empowerment of women has occurred in UP. The paper questions the efficacy of the indirect mode of election of ZPAs in bringing about empowerment of women, arguing that indirect elections enable powerful ruling elites to use women as proxies, subverting the legislative intent of the 73rd Amendment. The paper therefore proposes electoral reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• I collect annual district level data across India to estimate the effect of MGNREGA employment on women empowerment. • I use annual district level data on women demand for microfinance through self-help groups and incidents of sexual harassment and interpersonal violence as my indicators for women empowerment. • Using a difference-in-differences model, results indicate that the demand for microfinance among women increases and violence against women decreases as MGNREGA employment increases in a district. • These results align with a broad literature on the benefits of MGNREGA, which identifies important changes to household decision-making as women earn income across India. In many countries, women do not share the same decision-making power as the men around them. This preexisting discrimination suggests an imbalance in decision-making power in the household, which makes empowering the role of women a necessity for the health and development of our communities. Studies have noted how income growth across genders can shift decision-making power in the household. To investigate income growth and its effect on women empowerment, I analyze the Mahatmas Gandhi Employment Guarantee Act of 2005, which offers guaranteed employment to rural households throughout India. Its gradual implementation in three phases over a two year period allows for the use of a difference-in-differences analysis regarding the effects of guaranteed employment by men and women across districts. I analyze two outcomes variables related to women empowerment beginning in 2002 to 2017, including the demand for microfinance and violence against women. Results show that as women take up employment in a district, the demand for credit and savings increases and violence against women decreases. Each result aligns with a broad literature that identifies how income growth and employment empowers the health, social, and economic of status of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We study the impacts of women's Self-help group membership on women's and men's empowerment. • We measure empowerment using two alternate indices: the A-WEAI and the Pro-WEAI. • We find that SHG membership has a significant positive impact on aggregate measures of women's empowerment. • We also find that SHG membership reduces the gap between men's and women's empowerment scores. • The impacts are driven by increase in control over income, decisionmaking over credit, and active involvement in groups. Women's groups are important rural social and financial institutions in South Asia. In India, a large majority of women's groups programs are implemented through self-help groups (SHGs). Originally designed as savings and credit groups, the role of SHGs has expanded to include creating health and nutrition awareness, improving governance, and addressing social issues related to gender- and caste-based discrimination. This paper uses panel data from 1470 rural Indian women from five states to study the impact of SHG membership on women's empowerment in agriculture, using the project-level Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) and the abbreviated Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (A-WEAI). Because SHG membership was not randomized and women who self-select to be SHG members may be systematically different from non-members, we employ nearest neighbor matching methods to attribute the impact of SHG membership on women's empowerment in agriculture and intrahousehold inequality. Our findings suggest that SHG membership has a significant positive impact on aggregate measures of women's empowerment and reduces the gap between men's and women's empowerment scores. This improvement in aggregate empowerment is driven by improvements in women's scores, not a deterioration in men's. Greater control over income, greater decisionmaking over credit, and (somewhat mechanistically, given the treatment) greater and more active involvement in groups within the community lead to improvements in women's scores. However, impacts on other areas of empowerment are limited. The insignificant impacts on attitudes towards domestic violence and respect within the household suggest that women's groups alone may be insufficient to change deep-seated gender norms that disempower women. Our results have implications for the design and scale-up of women's group-based programs in South Asia, including the possibility that involving men is needed to change gender norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Can membership of self-help groups (SHGs), designed for enhancing livelihoods, create social capital for women? • We find that it can, even when the livelihoods are negligible. • Membership of SHGs increases personal efficacy and propensity for collective action. • Social capital generated by SHG membership is a significant positive impact as it strengthens the process of women's empowerment. The "strength of weak ties" has been established in the context of labour market outcomes, with theoretical and empirical investigation showing how weak ties lead to an increase in mobility and job opportunities. The impact of weak ties on community organisation is less well understood. We contribute to this literature by investigating if weak ties, generated via membership of livelihood programmes, can lead to the creation or enhancement of social capital. Based on data from one of the largest independent primary surveys for India, we find that participation in self-help groups had little impact on livelihoods, but led to the creation of significant social capital, as measured by indicators related to personal efficacy and collective action. We use Entropy Balancing to estimate mean effects to tackle the problem of non-random selection into the programme. In contrast to the bulk of existing evidence on livelihood programmes that is based on small samples, our large sample size and innovative survey design allow us to detect a larger number of effects with greater certainty. We argue that the social capital generated by the programme is a significant positive impact (even though the main target of the programme is to strengthen livelihoods), as it strengthens the process of women's empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]