Women Empowerment Index:Construction of a Tool to Measure Rural Women Empowerment Level in India

Authors

  • Chandan Roy
     Department of Economics, Kaliyaganj College, Kaliyaganj, Uttar Dinajpur, West Bengal – 733129
  • Susmita Chatterjee
     Maharaja Manindra Chandra College, Kolkata
  • Sangita Dutta Gupta
     IFIM Business School, Bangalore

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15410/aijm/2018/v7i1/119887

Keywords:

Women, Empowerment Index, Economic Development, Self Help Group, Economic Development.

Abstract

Poverty ignites the societal gap between men and women, while economic development narrows it down through its gender promotional activities. There is bidirectional relationship between economic development and empowerment of women. Women empowerment, being dependent on complex sociological and economic issues, needs to be measured in terms of specific parameters like 'access to resources', 'decision making capability' and 'ability to take a stand'. This particular study develops an Index based on few sector-specific parameters to measure empowerment level of women engaged in Self Help Groups. Both 'individual empowerment index' and 'group empowerment indices' have been constructed, where 'financial liberty', 'ability to take decisions', 'heath condition of the women and 'ability to stand up against the evils of the society' have been considered as her empowerment parameters. The index was applied on 300 SHG Group members of rural West Bengal, which provided us an idea about the existing level of rural women empowerment in West Bengal.

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Published

2018-06-01

How to Cite

Roy, C., Chatterjee, S., & Gupta, S. D. (2018). Women Empowerment Index:Construction of a Tool to Measure Rural Women Empowerment Level in India. ANVESHAK-International Journal of Management, 7(1), 199–212. https://doi.org/10.15410/aijm/2018/v7i1/119887

Issue

Volume 7, Issue 1, January 2018

Section

Articles
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Europe PMC

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