Women Empowerment through Self Help Groups

Women are the most preponderant segment of the rural society, regarded as “the unsung heroine who works from dawn to dusk but long been bypassed or overlooked in the process of empowerment. Majority women lack assets that help contribute to their empowerment and well-being, economic independence through self-employment and entrepreneurial development. Women empowerment is a global issue which has gained momentum in recent decades. Empowerment is an active process of enabling women to realize their full identity and power in all spheres of life. Entrepreneurship is the dynamic process of creating incremental wealth. The process of economic empowerment among women can be institutionalized through Self Help Groups (SHG). The SHGs are characterized by a focused attention on providing employment opportunities by imparting training in order to generate both income as well as employment (Husain and Nair, 2006). Today the SHGs are the largest Micro– Finance (MF) programme in the world. As empowerment is one of the key constituent elements for poverty alleviation. In order to improve economic access among women, ten self help groups were made in village Lohiyan and Rerwan in Jalandhar District with the help of a NGO. Each SHG was comprised of 10 to 12 women members. All the members were selected for the study. They were motivated to take trainings and start their own entrepreneur. Maximum number of subjects in each SHG was illiterate or studied up to metric. As self help groups are financed by the regional rural banks, cooperative banks and commercial banks. Present study was undertaken to analyze the formation and functioning of SHGs and the impact on socioeconomic status of women and to assess the relationship between access and success of SHG’s with government schemes, institutions like banks and NGOs in the support of Self Help Groups.