Empowerment of Women and Self-Help Groups

This is, a comprehensive study on empowerment of women through Self-Help Groups. In the 'light of past, experience of functioning of credit institutions, it is believed that the intervention of government in the credit market needs to be based on 'Self-Help' with 'Women Empowerment as the sole objective. The time-tested strategy that has yielded effective results is to help the poor women to help themselves. In other words the social functioning of women belonging to lower income group should be enhanced. Specifically the study focuses on the working of SHGs at group level and also analyses the efficacy of SHGs approach to micro credit in empowering the poor women. Unlike many studies which emphasize the impact of SHG on household income and living conditions of the SHG members, the present study attempts to compare the performance of SHGs belonging to different Self-Help Groups promoting Institutions (SHGPIs) with the performance of SHGs belonging to different regions. This book emphasizes the need to evaluate the functioning of Micro Credit Institutions in the form of SHGs which ultimately would contribute inputs to policy formulation.