Awareness Regarding Women Empowerment Programmes in Rural Households of Ludhiana

Abstract

The government of India declared year 2001 as women empowerment year and launched many useful programmes for awakening women. The present study was an attempt to know utilization of these programmes by rural home-makers. The study was conducted in 60 rural households of two villages selected from two blocks of Ludhiana district. The results revealed that few respondents (18.3%) were aware of the year of women empowerment as well as various empowerment programmes. Only 11.7 and 16.7 per cent were found having an awareness of Kishori Shakti Yojna and Sampooran Shiksha programmes, respectively. However, 30 per cent women started using women friendly technologies in their households for drudgery reduction and hence improving their quality of life. Further, none of the respondents was making use of credit facilities for starting their own enterprise to supplement family income as they were completely ignorant about various schemes. Schemes like Widow Pension Scheme, Maternity Benefits and Girl Child Benefits were fully utilized as these provide direct economic gains. Respondents strongly agreed that these programmes will make women aware of their rights but disagreed that these programmes will help to develop ability to make better decisions. They had no particular opinion whether these programmes will enable women to act as self sufficient. The suggestions from the respondents for the effective utilization of various schemes included expert guidance for starting any enterprise (96.7%) followed by training programme for elderly for changing their attitude towards women workforce participation (93.3%), programme for skill development (83.3%) and awareness generation programmes for credit facilities by government and non government organizations (86.7%).