Impact of Self-Help Groups on Empowerment of Women

Abstract

Women are the vital infrastructure and their empowerment would hasten the pace of social development. The present investigation was carried out in Amreli district of Gujarat State. District Watershed Development Unit (DWDU), Amreli (Gujarat) has formed SHGs under the Integrated Watershed Management Programme (IWMP) to create an awareness and participation among women residing in the rural pockets of Amreli district. To know the impact of SHGs a comparative study was carried out between SHG and non-SHG members. Only the SHGs which associated with IWMP from more than four years were selected while non-SHG members were selected from same villages only for the study. The diagnostic study was confi ned to 10 villages from which 90 SHGs and 90 non-SHG respondents were selected for the study. From the end results it is clearly indicated that exact two-fi fth (40.00%) SHG members were from medium level of empowerment followed by high and very high with 23.33 per cent and 21.11 per cent, respectively, whereas in case of Non-SHG members majority (57.78%) women were from low level of empowerment followed by medium level with 36.67 per cent and also the independent sample ‘Z’ test showed that there was highly signifi cant diff erence in the mean values of SHG members and Non-SHG members in case of all the components/ indicators.