Community Radio and Women Empowerment: A Pragmatic Investigation

Abstract

The socioeconomic growth of a country may be evaluated by the strength of its social communication system and infrastructure available to the masses: stronger the communication system, greater the rate of economic growth. India is a country with the utmost diversities in terms of geographical distribution, culture, caste, religion, language, rituals and beliefs. We have identified six indicators from available literature viz. social, political, economic empowerment, gender equality, participation in decision making and social status. These indicators were processed on the basis of data collected from women respondents engaged with community radio in their area of residence with the help of SPSS-20 and inferences were drawn pragmatically. The role of community radio (CR) has a moderate positive correlation with Political Empowerment (PE) followed by Gender Equality (GE), Social Empowerment (SE). Indicators like Participation in Decisions (PD), Social Status (SS) have a weak positive correlation. Economic Empowerment (EE) indicator was finally eliminated in the investigation process of women empowerment. We have simultaneously developed an abridged relationship between the dependent indicator and independents indicator that helped to understand the degree of variation in women empowerment that can be explained in terms of the degree of variation in its indicators of community radio. The variation in women empowerment has been explained by the community radio on various indicators and contribution of indicators. ANOVA was used to ascertain the differences in the mean values of all dependent indicators associated with the independent indicator (Women Empowerment). It was used to test the hypothesis with the help of Levene statistics. F test was used to find out the variance among the variables through the community radio and women empowerment. Key w ords: Community radio, women empowerment, socio-economic development, acrimony. DOI : 10.7176/NMMC/83-02 Publication date :September 30 th 2019