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The empowerment of women and improvement of their status and economic role needs to be integrated into economic development programs. One of the powerful approaches to Women Empowerment and rural entrepreneurship is the formation of Self Help Groups (SHGs) especially among women.
The empowerment of women and improvement of their status and economic role needs to be integrated into economic development programs. One of the powerful approaches to Women Empowerment and rural entrepreneurship is the formation of Self Help Groups (SHGs) especially among women.
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The empowerment of women and improvement of their status and economic role needs to be integrated into economic development programs. One of the powerful approaches to Women Empowerment and rural entrepreneurship is the formation of Self Help Groups (SHGs) especially among women.
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Descărcați ca DOCX, PDF, TXT sau citiți online pe Scribd
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Author FAQ Format of Research Paper Contact Us Vol - I , ISSUE - IV May 2011 : Other Author : Asso.Prof. Wale V.S. and Prof. Deshmukh A.M. Article : Women Empowerment through Self-help Group ABSTRACT : The growing social awareness across the globe has brought a number of issues to the fore among which gender equality and empowerment of women are very significant. Discrimination against women in the form of male-female differentiation constitutes the core of the gender-biased system. The Word Bank has suggested that empowerment of women should be a key aspect of social development programs. The empowerment is not essentially political alone in fact; political empowerment will not succeed in the absence of economic empowerment. The scheme of micro financing through Self Help Groups (SHGs) has transferred the real economic power in the hands of women and has considerably reduced their dependence on men. The empowerment of women and improvement of their status and economic role needs to be integrated into economic development programs, as the development of any country is inseparably linked with the status and development of women. Given the gender division of labour that prevails in India, Nutrition, Child health, and related matters typically depend mostly on womens actions and decisions. Experience has shown that promotion of enterprise creation and income generating activities among women would transform them from being alive to living with dignity. One of the powerful approaches to women empowerment and rural entrepreneurship is the formation of Self Help Groups (SHGs) especially among women. Women being central to the entire development process and at the precursor of social transformation can be demonstrated with many examples that could include Grameen Banks success, SHGs of ICICI Bank, Shakthi Ammas at HLL, Cemex, Amul, the success of Avon, Mary Kay, and Tupperware in US and other parts of the world. INTRODUCTION : This paper is divided into two sections. In the first section we shall discuss the concept of Self-Help Groups (SHGs) as an instrument of economic empowerment, its various models and the strength of informal sector over formal sector. In section II Importance of women empowerment through SHGs. Section III we shall conclude with the presentation of strategy of women empowerment by linking benefits extended by the governments to the members of Self-Help Groups (SHGs). Self- help group as an instrument of economic empowerment : Self Help Group (SHG) is a small voluntary association of poor people, preferably from the same socioeconomic background. They come together for the purpose of solving their common problems through self-help and mutual help. The SHG promotes small savings among its members. The savings are kept with a bank. This common fund is in the name of the SHG. Usually, the number of members in one SHG does not exceed twenty. Bank-SHGs linkage models Since the introduction of financial sector reforms in 1991 the banks are using these distinct linkage models to finance SHGs. 1. Model I: - Banks provide micro finance to non-governmental organization (NGOs) for lending to SHGs and ultimately to the micro entrepreneur (It covers about 27% of SHGs) 2. Model II: - Banks provide direct financing directly to SHGs for on landing to micro entrepreneur (It covers 17%) 3. Model III: - Banks finance directly to SHGs for on lending to micro entrepreneur with the intervention of NGO as social mobilizers and facilitators (It covers 56% of SHGs). 4. Model IV: - The fourth model envisages bank loans directly to individual members of SHGs upon recommendations of the SHGs and NGO. In this case, the NGO assists the Bank in monitoring supervising and recovery of loans. Formal & Informal systems Traditionally, the formal sector Banking Institution in India have been serving only the needs of the commercial sector and providing loans for middle and upper income groups. In India, we have multi-agency rural credit delivery structure comprising commercial Banks, Regional Rural Banks and Cooperative Banks with a large network of more than 1,53,000 retail credit outlets (One for every 4100 population). Yet reaching the poorest, whose credit requirements are very small, frequent and unpredictable, is still a difficult task and Sahukars (the rural non-formal Money Lenders) continues to be the main agency. Further, the systems and lengthy procedures of the banking institutions with emphasis on complicated qualifying requirements, tangible collateral, margin etc. also kept them away from these formal agencies. Banks too experienced certain problems like poor repayment, lack of supervision and monitoring, high proportion of non performing assets and poor repayment. Since the credit requirements of the rural poor cannot be adopted on project lending approach (like in formal organized sector) there emerged the need for an informal credit supply through SHGs. Social intermediation is required for: 1. Organising rural poor women 2. Educating them 3. Imparting Training and skill Commercial Banks, Housing Finance Institutions, NABARD, and Rural Development Banks, Land Development Banks, Cooperative Banks, are the major formal financial institutions. Urban Cooperative Banks (UCB) Urban Credit Cooperative Societies (UCCS) are the two primary cooperative financial institutions operating in the urban areas. The informal financial sources generally include funds available from family sources or local moneylenders. The local moneylenders charge exorbitant rates of interest due to their informal behavior and absence of any other source of credit for nonconventional needs. Chit funds, Bishis, are other forms of credit operated by groups of people for their mutual benefit. Lately, few of the NGO engaged in the activities related to community mobilization for their socio economic development have initiated savings and credit programmes for their target groups. The community based financial system can be categorized into two models: Group Based Financial Intermediary, and NGO Linked Financial Intermediary Most of the NGOs like SHARAN in Delhi, Federation of Thrift and Credit Association (FTCA) in Hyderabad, or SPARC in Bombay, SEWA in Ahmedabad. The experience of these informal intermediaries shows that although the savings of group members, small in nature do not attract high returns, it is still practiced due to security reasons for getting unsecured loans without much formalities and collaterals at lower rates compared to that available from money lenders. Importance of women empowerment through SHGs : Women are critical for Development: In his book "The Fortune at the bottom of the Pyramid", Prof. C.K.Prahlad comments, "A well-understood but poorly articulated reality of development is the role of women. Women are central to the entire development process. There are also at the vanguard of social transformation. For example, Grameen bank's success is based on lending only to women. The SHGs at ICICI bank are all women, as are the shakti ammas at HLL. The women are entrepreneurs responsible for saving and accessing credit. In the case of CEMEX, the company works only with women. Amul, a milk cooperative, depends on women for their milk origination in villages. Women also collect the cash for the milk and therefore have achieved a new social status. Access to economic independence can change the long tradition of suppression of women and denial of opportunities. The success of Avon, Mary Kay and Tupperware in US and other parts of the world are also based on the role of women entrepreneurship. When asked with Muhammad Yunus, managing director of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, a pioneer in the practice of microcredit lending as to why loaned primarily to women, he replied, that "It has to do with the decision to have a separate bank for the poor people. From the beginning, I had complained about the banking system on two grounds. One complaint was that the banking system was denying financial services to the poor people through certain rules it had set up. The second allegation was that the banking system also was not treating women fairly. If you look at the gender composition of all the borrowers of all the banks in Bangladesh, not even 1 % of the borrowers happen to be women. I said this is a very gender-biased organization. So when I began, I wanted to make sure half the borrowers in my program are women so that they are even. I did that. It was not easy because women themselves didn't think that they should borrow money. I had to do a lot of convincing. I encouraged them to believe that they can borrow money and make money. Part of that effort was to overcome fears -- cultural fears -- and the fact that they had never had any experience with business and so on. Soon we saw that money going to women brought much more benefit to the family than money going to the men. So we changed our policy and gave a high priority to women. As a result, now 96% of our four million borrowers in Grameen Bank are women". One of the powerful approaches to women empowerment and rural entrepreneurship is the formation of Self Help Groups (SHGs) especially among women. This strategy had fetched noticeable results not only in India and Bangladesh but world over. "Women self-help groups are increasingly being used as tool for various developmental interventions. Credit and its delivery through self-help groups have also been taken as a means for empowerment of rural women. This integrated approach, whereby, credit is only an entry point, and an instrument to operationalise other aspects of group dynamics and management, also caters to the need for social intermediation of these groups. A self-help group is conceived as a sustainable people's institution that provides the poor rural women with space and support necessary for them to take effective steps towards achieving greater control of their lives. The SHG approach has proved successful not only in improving the economic conditions through income generation but in creating awareness about health and hygiene, sanitation and cleanliness, environmental protection, importance of education and better response for development schemes. Through organizing informal self-help groups (SHGs), rural women in India are provided credit and extension support for various production-oriented income generating activities. These activities usually include garment making, embroidery, food processing, bee keeping, basketry, gem cutting, weaving, and knitting. SHGs are self-governed, with decisions about production and marketing taken collectively, although the group leader is responsible for identifying potential marketing centers and consumers. These groups represent a new culture in rural development, breaking with traditional bureaucracy and top-down management. Informal groups empower rural women to manage rural industries and make decisions collectively for their common economic interests. Studies on the development of informal women's groups in India, shows how it is possible to avoid the 'top-down management' and bureaucracy that often contribute to the failure of other schemes. Informal self-help groups in rural areas serve to empower women, and provide a basis for the provision of credit and other support for various production and income-generation activities. Conclusion : The success of any strategy of women empowerment depends upon the following factors: 1. Level of education, hard work 2. Social custom 3. Family planning, small family 4. Health, medical services, cleanliness 5. Environment, tree growing, kitchen gardening. 6. Collective strategies beyond micro-credit to increase the endowments of the poor/women enhance their exchange outcomes vis--vis the family, markets, state and community, and socio-cultural and political spaces are required for both poverty reduction and women empowerment. Bibliography : Batliwala, Srilatha. 1994. The Meaning of Womens Empowerment: New Concepts from Action. In Gita Sen, Adrienne Germain, and Lincoln C. Chen. Population Policies Reconsidered: Health, Empowerment and Rights. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chen, M.A. 1983. A Quiet Revolution: Women in Transition in rural Bangladesh. Cambridge: Schenkman. Chiranjeevulu, T., Empowering Women through Self-help Groups, Kurukshetra, Ministry of Rural Development, Vol.51, No.5, March 2003. C.K.Prahalad, 2005, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Wharton School Publishing Gurumoorthy, T.R., SHGs-Economic Empowerment through Self- Reliance, Social Welfare, Vol.49, No.7, October 2002. Hashemi, S. M., Schuler, S. R., & Riley, A. P. 1996. Rural credit programs and women's empowerment in Bangladesh. World Development, 24(4). Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, 2002, India: Development and Participation, Oxford University Press Krishnaiah, P (2003) Poverty Reduction: Self-Help Group Strategy UBSPD New Delhi NABARD. 2003. SHG-Bank Linkage in India. Mumbai, NABARD. Purohit, Sheela, Micro Credit and Women Empowerment, http://www.gdre.org Sabharwal, Gita (2003) From Margin to the Mainstream: Micro- finance Programmes nd Women Empowerment: The Bangladesh Experience http://www.gdre.org UNDP. 1995. Human development report 1995. United Nations Development Programme, Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford. United Nations Development Programme, 1999. 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