One key factor for the gap In Implementation of laws and policies o address discrimination, economic disadvantages, and violence against women at the community level Is the largely patriarchal structure that governs the community and households In much of India. As such, women and girls have restricted mobility, access to education, access to health faceless, and lower decision-making power. And experience higher rates of violence. Political participation is also hindered at the Penchant (local governing bodies) level and at the state and national levels, despite existing reservations for women.
The impact of the patriarchal structure can be seen n rural and urban India, although women’s empowerment in rural India is much less visible than in urban areas. This is of particular concern, since much of India is rural despite the high rate of arbitration and expansion of cities. Rural women, as opposed to women in urban settings, face inequality at much higher rates, and in all spheres of life. Urban women and, in particular, urban educated women enjoy relatively higher access to economic opportunities, health and education, and experience less domestic violence.
Women (both urban and rural) who have some level of education have higher decision- making power in the household and the immunity. Furthermore, the level of women’s education also has a direct implication on maternal mortality rates, and nutrition and health indicators among children. Among rural women, there are further divisions that hinder women’s empowerment. The most notable ones are education levels and caste and class divisions. Women from lower castes (the scheduled castes, other backward castes, and tribal communities) are particularly vulnerable to maternal mortality and infant mortality.
They are often unable to access health and educational services, lack decision- making power, and face higher levels of violence. Among women of lower caste and class, some level of education has shown to have a positive Impact on women’s empowerment indicators. Social divisions among urban women also have a salary Impact on empowerment Indicators. Upper class and educated women have better access to health, education, and economic opportunities, whereas lower class, less educated women In urban settings enjoy these rights significantly less.
Due to rapid arbitration and lack of economic opportunities In other parts of the country, cycles also house sprawling slum areas. Slums are Informal sprawls, and most times lack Asia services such as clean water, sanitation, and health faceless. Additionally, slum dwellers mostly work in unrealized and informal sectors, making them vulnerable children in slums are among the most vulnerable to violence and abuse, and are deprived of their basic human rights.
As a result off vibrant women’s movement in the last 50 years, policies to advance human rights for women in India are substantial and forward-thinking, such as the Domestic Violence Act (2005), and the 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Constitution that provide reservations for women to enter politics at the Penchant level. There are multiple national and state level governmental and non-governmental mechanisms such as the Women’s Commission to advance these policies, and the implementation of these policies is decentralized to state and district-level authorities and organizations that include local non- governmental organizations.
The policy/practice gap in India cuts across all sectors and initiatives as a result of rampant corruption and lack of good governance practices. State-level governments claim a lack of resources, and the resources they do receive are highly susceptible to corruption. Financial corruption hinders the overpayment’s ability to invest in social capital, including initiatives to advance women’s empowerment. Since the sass’s India has put in place processes and legislative acts such as the Right to Information Act (2005) for information disclosure to increase transparency and hold government officials accountable.
Mistrust of political institutions and leaders remains high in the society with corruption and graft allegations often covering media headlines. In addition to corruption and inadequate resources for implementation of initiatives at the community level, women’s empowerment in India is negatively impacted by the pervasive scarification of women in the family and the community. Discrimination against women in most parts of India (particularly the north) emerges from the social and religious construct of women’s role and their status.
As such, in many parts of India, women are considered to be less than men, occupying a lower status in the family and community, which consequentially restricts equal opportunity in women and girls’ access to education, economic possibilities, and mobility. Discrimination also limits women’s choices and freedom. These choices are further dependent on structural factors like caste and class. Empowerment for women in India requires a crosscutting approach and one which addresses the diversity of social structures that govern women’s lives.
Identity politics in India is a very critical political instrument, which is both used and abused throughout political and social institutions. There are numerous social movements fighting for the rights of the marginality, such as the Dalai rights movement, the tribal rights movement, etc. These movements have achieved many gains in assuring representation of the traditionally marginality communities into mainstream society. Women’s rights within these movements are argyle unarticulated and thus reinforce inequalities within the very structures from which they are demanding inclusion.
Empowerment approaches for women therefore is not only about providing services, but also about recognizing their lived realities of multiple layers of discrimination that hinder their access to services. Similarly, access to education for girls in some of the northern states like Attar Pradesh and Punjab does not only rely on proximity of schools. Access to education is part of a larger structural concern, including the practice of son preference, which creates inherent discriminatory practices. Education initiatives therefore cannot rely root causes of discrimination against women and girls which affect the decisions made by parents.
Women’s security, decision-making power, and mobility are three indicators for women’s empowerment. In India, and more so for rural and less educated women, these three indicators are significantly low. Data from the NEFF-3 survey on women’s decision-making power shows that only about one third of the women interviewed took decisions on their own regarding household issues and their health. Decision-making power among employed urban women was higher than among rural and less educated women. The survey also found that older married women had more decision-making power than the younger married women.
Younger women and girls experience an additional layer of discrimination as a result of their age. Data on women’s mobility in India indicates the lack of choices women have, and that urban and educated women have more mobility choices than rural women. The data shows that about half the women interviewed had the freedom to go to the market or a health facility alone. Seventy- nine percent of urban women from the highest education brackets and only about 40 percent of rural women without education were allowed to go to the market alone. Mobility restrictions for women are dependent upon how the family and community view women’s rights.
They also, however, are intrinsically dependent on the prevailing levels of violence against women in the household and the community. Abuse and violence towards women is predominantly perpetrated within the household, and marital violence is among the most accepted by both men and women. Wife beating, slapping, rape, dowry related deaths, feudal violence towards tribal and lower caste women, trafficking, sexual buses, and street violence permeate the Indian social fabric, and create one of the most serious obstacles in achieving women’s empowerment.
The gap in policy and practice in women’s empowerment is most visible when it comes to the level and kinds of violence women face in India. Despite the policies, laws, and initiatives by civil society institutions, violence against women in India is widespread and the consequences for perpetrators rarely match the crime. Enforcement of laws and sentencing of perpetrators are long and arduous processes, and the gaps in these processes are further widened by corruption. Another gap in implementing laws and policies on violence against women is the inaccessibility of information on victims’ rights among rural and less educated women.
Additionally, social stigma and the fear of abandonment by the family play a big role in women and girls’ ability or inability to access laws and policies to address sexual and physical violence. WOMEN’S ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES IN INDIA India is one of the world’s fastest growing economies, with women mainly from the middle class increasingly entering the workforce. Urban centers like Delhi and Bungalows have seen an influx of young women from semi-urban and rural parts of he country, living alone and redefining themselves. 5 However, the story of economic empowerment for women is not a singular narrative; rather it is located in a complex set of caste, class, religious, and ethnic identities. The Global Gender Gap Report by the World Economic Forum in 2009 ranked India 14th out of 134 countries for inequality between men and women in the economy, politics, health, and education. 26 On equal economic opportunities and women’s participation in the the workforce varies greatly from state to state: 21% in Delhi; 23% in Punjab; 65% in Maniple; 71% Chastiser; 76% in Raunchy Pradesh. The diversity of women’s economic opportunities between states is due to the cultural, religious, and ethnic diversity of each state. Northern states like Delhi and Punjab lag far behind on gender equality measures, including the alarming sex ratio between men and women (due to son preference and sex-selective abortion), low female literacy levels, and high rates of gender-based violence. In rural India, women’s economic opportunities remain restricted by social, cultural, and religious barriers. Most notably inheritance laws embedded in Hindu and Shari civil codes continue to reorganize women in the household and the larger community.
Rural women, particularly of lower caste and class, have the lowest literacy rates, and therefore do not have the capacity to negotiate pay or contracts and most often engage in the unrealized sector, self- employment, or in small scale industry. Self-help groups (She) are a widely practiced model for social and economic mobility by Nags and the government. She provide women with the opportunity to manage loans and savings that can be used by members for varying needs. Eggs also are used to promote social change among the members and the community at large.
Members of Eggs have used their experiences as leverage to enter other local institutions such as the Penchant Chap. Rural, low caste, and tribal women also make up 70% of domestic workers in India, a sector which is largely unregulated and unrealized. Indian’s growing economy has allowed for many upper and middle-class women to enter the workforce, and while poor rural women have little access to education and training, there is a high demand for domestic workers in urban hubs. Domestic workers are mostly illiterate, with little or no negotiating power for wage equity, and re highly vulnerable to exploitation and sexual and physical abuse. 0 There is a movement at the policy level to organize domestic workers and to create laws to regulate minimum wage, working hours, and other measures such as life and health insurance. Currently a national-level Attackers on Domestic Workers has been formed that will present recommendations to the central government on better enforcement of rights for the many undocumented domestic workers in India Women are also very visible in the construction sector in India, and like domestic workers are largely unrealized and rely on daily wagers. Women construction workers are mostly poor and illiterate and have little negotiating power.
This sector is also unregulated and highly vulnerable to exploitation. Women workers also earn significantly less than men, although women are the ones who do most of the backbreaking work like carrying bricks and other heavy materials on site. On the other end of the spectrum, while India has one of the highest percentages of professional women in the world, those who occupy managerial positions are under 3%. Most women work in low administrative positions, and many of the young women grating to urban centers mostly work in service and retail industries, although more and more women are entering the IT and other technical sectors.
In India, the emergence of liberalizing and globalization in early sass’s aggravated the problem of women workers in unrealized sectors from bad to worse as most of the women who were engaged in various self employment activities have lost their livelihood. Despite in substantial contribution of women to both household and national economy, their work is considered Just an extension of household domain and remains non-monitored. In India, Micromanage scene is dominated by
Self Help Group (She) as an effective mechanism for providing financial services to the “Unreduced Poor”, and also in strengthening their collective self help capacities leading to their empowerment. Rapid progress in SSH formation has now turned into an empowerment movement among women across the country. Micro finance is necessary to overcome exploitation, create confidence for economic self reliance of the rural poor, particularly among rural women. Although no ‘magic bullet’, they are potentially a very significant contribution to gender equality and women’s empowerment.
Through their contribution to women’s ability to earn an income, hose programmer have potential to initiate a series of Virtuous spirals’ of economic empowerment, and wider social and political empowerment. The results from these self-help groups (She) are promising and have become a focus of intense examination as it is proving to be an effective method of poverty reduction and economic empowerment. Mainly on the basis of secondary data analysis, this paper attempts to highlight the role of Micromanage and She in the empowerment of women in India.
EMPOWERMENT: FOCUS ON POOR WOMEN In India, the trickle down effects of macroeconomic policies have failed to resolve he problem of gender inequality. Women have been the vulnerable action of society and constitute a sizeable segment of the poverty-struck population. Women face gender specific barriers to access education health, employment etc. Micro finance deals with women below the poverty line. Micro loans are available solely and entirely to this target group of women.
There are several reason for this: Among the poor , the poor women are most disadvantaged -they are characterized by lack of education and access of resources, both of which is required to help them work their way out of poverty and for upward economic and social mobility. The problem is more acute for women in countries like India, despite the fact that women’s labor makes a critical contribution to the economy. This is due to the low social status and lack of access to key resources. Evidence shows that groups of women are better customers than men, the better managers of resources.
If loans are routed through women benefits of loans are spread wider among the household. Since women’s empowerment is the key to socio economic development of the community; bringing women into the mainstream of national development has been components for women in its programmer. Funds are earmarked as “Women’s component” to ensure flow of adequate resources for the same. Besides Guarantying Grahame Swagger Yoga (EGGS), Ministry of Rural Development is implementing other scheme having women’s component .
The attackers on supportively policy and Regulatory Framework for Micromanage has defined micromanage as “Provision of thrift, credit and other financial services and products of very small amounts to the poor in rural, semi-urban or urban areas for enabling them to raise their income levels and improve living standards”. The term “Micro” literally means “small”. But the task force has not defined any amount. However as per Micro Credit Special Cell of the Reserve Bank Of India , the borrower amounts Upton the limit of RSI. 25000/- could be considered as micro credit products and this amount could be gradually increased up to RSI. 0000/- over a period of time which roughly equals to $500 – a standard for South Asia as per international perceptions. The term micro finance, sometimes is used interchangeably with the term micro credit. However while micro credit refers to purveyance of loans in small quantities, the term micromanage has a broader meaning covering in its ambit other financial revises like saving, insurance etc. As well. The mantra “Micromanage” is banking through groups. The essential features of the approach are to provide financial services through the groups of individuals, formed either in Joint liability or co-obligation mode.
The other dimensions of the micromanage approach are: – Savings/Thrift precedes credit – Credit is linked with savings/thrift – Absence of subsidies -Group plays an important role in credit appraisal, monitoring and recovery. Basically groups can be of two types: Self Help Groups (She) : The group in this case does financial intermediation on leaf of the formal institution. This is the predominant model followed in India. Grahame Groups: In this model, financial assistance is provided to the individual in a group by the formal institution on the strength of group’s assurance.
In other words, individual loans are provided on the strength of Joint liability/co obligation. This micromanage model was initiated by Bangladesh Grahame Bank and is being used by some of the Micro Finance Institutions (Miff) in our country. Concern with women’s access to credit and assumptions about contributions to women’s empowerment are not new. From the early sass women’s movements in a umber of countries became increasingly interested in the degree to which women were able to access poverty-focused credit programmer and credit cooperatives.
In India organizations like Self- Employed Women’s Association (SEWS) among others with origins and affiliations in the Indian labor and women’s movements identified credit as a major constraint in their work with informal sector women workers. The problem of women’s access to credit was given particular emphasis at the first International Women’s Conference in Mexico in 1975 as part of the emerging awareness of the importance of women’s productive role both for national economies, and for women’s rights. This led to the setting up of the Women’s World Banking network and production of manuals for women’s credit provision.
Other women’s organizations world-wide set up credit and savings components both as a way of increasing women’s incomes and bringing women together to address wider gender issues. From the mid-sass there was a mushrooming of donor, government and MONGO-sponsored credit programmer in the wake of the 1985 Nairobi women’s conference (Mayo’s, AAA). The sass and sass also saw development and rapid expansion of large minimalist poverty-targeted micro-finance institutions and outworks like Grahame Bank, ACTION and Finical among others.
In these organizations and others evidence of significantly higher female repayment rates led to increasing emphasis on targeting women as an efficiency strategy to increase credit recovery. A number of donors also saw female-targeted financially-sustainable micro-finance as a means of marrying internal demands for increased efficiency because of declining budgets with demands of the increasingly vocal gender lobbies. The trend was further reinforced by the Micro Credit Summit Campaign starting in 1997 which had reaching and empowering women’ as it’s second key goal after poverty reduction (RESULTS 1997).
Micro-finance for women has recently been seen as a key strategy in meeting not only Millennium Goal 3 on gender equality, but also poverty Reduction, Health, HIVE/AIDS and other goals. POVERTY REDUCTION PARADIGM The poverty alleviation paradigm underlies many MONGO integrated poverty-targeted community development programmer. Poverty alleviation here is defined in broader terms than market incomes to encompass increasing capacities and choices and decreasing the vulnerability of poor people.
The main focus of programmer as a whole is on evolving sustainable livelihoods, community development and social service provision like literacy, healthcare and infrastructure development. There is not only a concern with reaching the poor, but also the poorest. Policy debates have focused particularly on the importance of small savings and loan provision for consumption as well as production, group formation and the possible Justification for some level of subsidy for programmer working with particular client groups or in particular contexts.
Some programmer have developed effective methodologies for poverty targeting and/or operating in remote areas. Such strategies have recently become a gender lobbies have argued for targeting women because of higher levels of female poverty and women’s responsibility for household well-being. However although gender inequality is recognized as an issue, the focus is on assistance to households and there is a tendency to see gender issues as cultural and hence not subject to outside intervention.
Although term ’empowerment’ is frequently used in general terms, often synonymous with a multi-dimensional definition of poverty alleviation, the term ‘ women’s empowerment ‘ is often considered best avoided as being too controversial and political. The assumption is that increasing women’s access to micro-finance will enable women to make a greater contribution to household income and this, together with other interventions to increase household well-being, will translate into improved well-being for women and enable women to bring about wider changes in gender inequality.
MICRO FINANCE INSTRUMENT FOR WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT Micro Finance is emerging as a powerful instrument for poverty alleviation in the new economy. In India, micro finance scene is dominated by Self Help Groups (She) – Bank Linkage Programmer, aimed at providing a cost effective mechanism for roving financial services to the “unreduced poor”. Based on the philosophy of peer pressure and group savings as collateral substitute , the SSH programmer has been successful in not only in meeting peculiar needs of the rural poor, but also in strengthening collective self-help capacities of the poor at the local level, leading to their empowerment.
Micro Finance for the poor and women has received extensive recognition as a strategy for poverty reduction and for economic empowerment. Increasingly in the last five years , there is questioning of whether micro credit is cost effective approach to economic empowerment of poorest and, among them, women in particular. Development practitioners in India and developing countries often argue that the exaggerated focus on micro finance as a solution for the poor has led to neglect by the state and public institutions in addressing employment and livelihood needs of the poor.
Credit for empowerment is about organizing people, particularly around credit and building capacities to manage money. The focus is on getting the poor to immobile their own funds, building their capacities and empowering them to leverage external credit. Perception women is that learning to manage money and rotate funds builds women’s capacities and confidence to intervene in local governance beyond the limited goals of ensuring access to credit. Further, it combines the goals of financial sustainability with that of creating community owned institutions. Before sass’s, credit schemes for rural women were almost negligible.
The concept of women’s credit was born on the insistence by women oriented studies that highlighted the discrimination and struggle of women in having the access of credit. However, there is a perceptible gap in financing nine credit needs of the poor especially women in the rural sector. There are certain misconception about the poor people that they need loan at subsidized rate of interest on soft terms, they lack education, skill, capacity to save, credit worthiness and therefore are not bankable. Nevertheless, the experience of several Eggs reveal that rural poor are actually efficient managers of credit and finance.
Availability of timely and adequate credit is essential for them to undertake any economic activity poor by implementing different poverty alleviation programmer but with little success. Since most of them are target based involving lengthy procedures for loan disbursement, high transaction costs, and lack of supervision and monitoring. Since the credit requirements of the rural poor cannot be adopted on project lending app roach as it is in the case of organized sector, there emerged the need for an informal credit supply through She.
The rural poor with the assistance from Nags have demonstrated their potential for self help to secure economic and financial strength. Various case studies show that there is a positive correlation between credit availability and women’s empowerment. PROBLEM AND CHALLENGES Surveys have shown that many elements contribute to make it more Difficult for women empowerment through micro businesses. These elements are: Lack of knowledge of the market and potential profitability, thus Making the choice of business difficult. Inadequate book-keeping.
Employment of too many relatives which increases social pressure to share benefits. Setting prices arbitrarily. Lack of capital. High interest rates. Inventory and inflation accounting is never undertaken. Credit policies that can gradually ruin their business (many customers cannot pay cash; on the other hand, suppliers are very harsh towards women). Other shortcomings includes, 1. Burden of meeting: Time consuming meetings, in particular in programmer based on group lending, and time consuming income generating activities without reduction of traditional responsibilities increase women’s work and time burden. . New Pressures: By using social capital, in-group lending/group collateral programmer, additional stresses and pressures are introduced, which might increase vulnerability and reflect disembowelment. 3. Reinforcement of traditional gender roles : lack of economic empowerment: Micro finance assists women to perform rotational roles better and women thus remain trapped in low productivity sectors, not moving from the group of survival enterprises to micro-enterprises.
There are evidence of men withdrawing their contributions to certain types of household expenditures. However impact on incomes is widely variable. Studies which consider income levels find that for the majority of borrowers income increases are small, and in some cases negative. All the evidence suggests that most women invest in existing activities which are low profit and insecure and/or in their husband’s activities. In many curative activities of their own through credit and savings alone.
It is clear that women’s choices about activity and their ability to increase incomes are seriously constrained by gender inequalities in access to other resources for investment, responsibility for household subsistence expenditure, lack of time because of unpaid domestic work and low levels of mobility, constraints on sexuality and sexual violence which limit access to markets in many cultures. These gender constraints are in addition to market constraints on expansion of the informal sector and resource and skill constraints on the ability of poor men as well s women to move up from survival activities to expanding businesses.
Savings provide women with a means of building up an asset base. Women themselves also often value the opportunity to be seen to be making a greater contribution to household well-being giving them greater confidence and sense of self-worth. However women’s contribution to increased income going into households does not ensure that women necessarily benefit or that there is any challenge to gender inequalities within the household. Women’s expenditure patterns may replicate ether than counter gender inequalities and continue to disadvantage girls.
Without substitute care for small children, the elderly and disabled, and provision of services to reduce domestic work many programmer reported adverse effects of women’s outside work on children and the elderly. Daughters in particular may be withdrawn from school to assist their mothers. Although in some contexts women may be seeking to increase their influence within joint decision-making processes rather than independent control over income (Jabber 1998), neither of these outcomes can be assumed.
Women’s perceptions of value and self-worth are not necessarily translated into actual well-being benefits or change in gender relations in the household (Seen 1990, Candidate 1999). Worryingly, in response to women’s increased (but still low) incomes evidence indicates that men may be withdrawing more of their own contribution for their own luxury expenditure. Men are often very enthusiastic about women’s credit programmer, and other income generation out programmer, for this reason because their wives no longer ‘nag them for money Small increases in access to income and influence may
