SUCCESS STORY OF SELF HELP GROUPS WITHOUT FINANCIAL HELP: A PARADIGM SHIFT OF WOMEN EMPOWERMENT

Abstract

Women are the nucleus of our civilization. They have different roles to play in the ever changing social set-up. Women’s development is directly related with the nation development. With the dawn of independence our constitution guaranteed gender equality and a large number of schemes and programmes have been initiated for women’s development. Self Help Group (SHG) is a group of village-based financial intermediary usually composed of between 10-15 local women or men. The group may either a registered or unregistered group having homogenous socio-economic backgrounds, willfully joining together with an attitude to save their money, make use of such funds to contribute to a common fund with an intention to meet their emergency needs on the basis of mutual help. Every nation across the globe is keen in developing the country as powerful in all dimensions. This could be achieved through empowering its citizens in the country. Empowerment is far away from essentially political; it must be a process involved with personal, economic, social and political dimensions with personal empowerment being the core component in the empowerment process. Micro-financing to SHGs create lot of avenues for the empowerment and in promoting well being for women.