The Impact of Micro Credit on Women Entrepreneurs Towards Their Empowerment: A Study on SHGs in Rural RR District of Telangana

Abstract

Women empowerment encompasses a wide range of interpretations right from seeing it as the means by which individuals and groups take the control of their circumstances and achieve their own goals to as the process of challenging the existing power relations and transforming structures and institutions that perpetuate gender discrimination. In the last two decades of 20th century world intelligentsia recognized the role of women empowerment in the development agenda and World Bank included GDI and GEM as a part of its developmental goals also.In India SHG – Bank linkage program is very popular model of microfinance and is regarded as ‘magical wand’ of women empowerment. SHG (Self Help Groups) Federations is a development over it. The federation model known as IKP is implemented in the study area RR district. The research questions that prompted for this study are – What exactly is the process of empowerment? Is it true that micro finance and self help groups can bring empowerment? Can gaining access to credit and other facilities itself expand their choices and decision making abilities? The present paper is a probe into the conceptual intricacies and also contains an investigation conducted in Ranga Reddy district of Andhra Pradesh. The study mainly aims to assess the empowerment aspects among women in economic, family, social and political fronts by classifying them into two categories namely ‘micro entrepreneurs’ and ‘passive beneficiaries’.