14 a study on women empowerment through self help groups in india

October - December 2018 ISSN: 2250-1940 (P), 2349-1647(O)
Research Explorer Volume VI, Issue 21
65
Available online @ www.iaraindia.com / www.selptrust.org
RESEARCH EXPLORER- A Blind Review & Refereed Quarterly International Journal
ISSN: 2250-1940 (P) 2349-1647 (O)
Impact Factor: 3.655 (CIF), 2.78 (IRJIF), 2.77 (NAAS)
Volume VI, Issue 21
October - December 2018
Formally UGC Approved Journal (63185), © Author
A STUDY ON WOMEN EMPOWERMENT THROUGH SELF HELP
GROUPS IN INDIA
Dr. S. PACKIALAKSHMI
Assistant Professor of Commerce, Devanga Arts College, Aruppukottai
Abstract
Women empowerment is a process in which women challenge the existing norms and
culture, to effectively promote their well being. The participation of women in Self Help
Groups (SHGs) made a significant impact on their empowerment both in social and
economical aspects. In India, this scheme is implemented with the help of NABARD as a
main nodal agency in rural development. It is self employment generation scheme for
especially rural women, who don’t have their own assets. The word 'empowerment' means
giving power. According to the International Encyclopedia (1999), power means having the
capacity and the means to direct one's life towards desired social, political and economic
goals or status. Empowerment provides a greater access to knowledge and resources, more
autonomy in decision making, greater ability to plan lives, more control over the
circumstances which influence lives, and freedom from customs, beliefs and practices. Thus,
empowerment of women is not just a goal in itself, but key to all global development goals.
Empowerment is an active multidimensional process to enable women to realize their
identity and power in all spheres of life. This paper examines the women empowerment
through SHGs and also explains effectiveness of self-help groups in Indian context.
Keywords: Women empowerment, Global development, Poverty alleviation, SHG.
Introduction
In the early decades, the concept of
women development was totally out of
mind and their condition was miserable.
But with the changed scenario, the thinking
of people has been changed due to
education, awareness and now, the
problems of women are looked upon as the
problems of social welfare and are
considered more seriously and ultimately
solved in the form of other way round
particularly in the past more than 15 years.
Due to the development of new policies,
programmes and even projects, the status of
women has totally been changed as they
provide assistance to the low income
women. This concern for low-income
women’s needs has coincided historically
with recognition of their important role in
development. Various intervention
approaches have been developed in order to
address the needs of the women which
ultimately reveal modifications not only in
social policy approaches to third World

66
Development, state policies relating to
women but also in the overall economic
policy of the country as a whole. The
empowerment approach is the most recent
and is aimed at empowering women
through greater self-reliance and internal
strength.
Women Empowerment
The word empowerment is defined as the
process by which women take control and
ownership of their choices. Empowerment
is a process of awareness and capacity
building leading to greater participation, to
greater decision making power and control
and transformative action. Empowerment
of women signifies harnessing women
power by conscientising their tremendous
potential and encouraging them to work
towards attaining a dignified and satisfying
way of life through confidence and
competence as person with self-respect,
rights and responsibilities. The core
elements of empowerment have been
defined as agency (the ability to define
one’s goals and act upon them), awareness
of gendered power structures, self-esteem,
and self-confidence. Paramasivan C and
Subathra S (2017) Women in SC and ST
are started their business, thus poverty is
reduced and they employed in income
generated activities as individual or as
groups. Training, subsidies and bank loan
supported them to lead their life and be a
good decision maker. This enhanced their
standard of living. In Tiruchirappalli
district, SC/ST women come forward and
involved themselves in entrepreneurial
activities. The government increased the
amount of subsidy year by year for
improvement of SC/ST community.
Women Empowerment refers to an
increase in the strength of women such as
spiritual, political, social or economic. The
most common explanation of “Women’s
Empowerment” is the ability to excise full
control over one’s actions. Thus, women
empowerment occurs in real sense when
women achieve increased control and
participation in decision making that leads
to their better access to resources it often
involves the empowered developing
confidence in their own capacities.
Women Empowerment in India
The year 2001 had been declared by
the Government of India as “Women’s
Empowerment Year” to focus on a vision
where women are equal partners like men”.
Because the Constitution of India grants
equality to women in various fields of life.
In the past, the position of women was
miserable in the society and even women
were not ready to undertake any assignment
or job due to many reasons like fear,
shyness, male dominance in the society and
purda system but time has been changed
now. Women of today are not like the early
days. Now, they are always ready to come
forward and want more economic
independence, their own identity,
achievements, equal status in the society
and greater freedom. And Government of
India has provided for Self Help Groups
(SHGs) to them so that proper attention
should be given to their economic
independence through self employment,
entrepreneurial development and well
being that ultimately leads to its
contribution.
SHGs have been emerged as a
powerful instrument in order to alleviate
poverty and for the empowerment of
women in the rural economy. SHGs
through the network of commercial banks,
co-operative banks, regional rural banks,
NABARD and NGO's has been largely
supply driven and a recent approach in the
provision of financial services to the poor
and further upgrading their status in the
society. In this way, SHGs are important
not only to reduce rural poverty, to promote
rural savings but also to increase gainful
employment.
Self-Help Group
Self-Help Group (SHG) is a small
voluntary association of poor people,
preferably from the same socio-economic
background. They come together for the
purpose of solving their common problems

67
through self-help and mutual help. The
SHG promotes small savings among its
members. The savings are kept with a bank.
Following are the advantages of SHG’s.
1. An economically poor individual gains
strength as part of a group.
2. Besides, financing through SHGs
reduces transaction costs for both
lenders and borrowers.
3. While lenders have to handle only a
single SHG account instead of a large
number of small-sized individual
accounts, borrowers as part of an SHG
cut down expenses on travel (to and from
the branch and other places) for
completing paper work and on the loss
of workdays in canvassing for loans.
4. Where successful, SHGs have
significantly empowered poor people,
especially women, in rural areas.
5. SHGs have helped immensely in
reducing the influence of informal
lenders in rural areas.
6. Many big corporate houses are also
promoting SHGs at many places in
India.
7. SHGs help borrowers overcome the
problem of lack of collateral.
Need of SHGS
The rural poor are incapacitated due
to various reasons, because most of them
are socially backward, illiterate, with low
motivation and poor economic base.
Individually, a poor man is not only weak
in socioeconomic term but also lacks access
to the knowledge and information which
are the most important components of
today’s development process. However, in
a group, they are empowered to overcome
many of these shortcomings. Hence, the
role of SHGs is highly essential which in
specific terms covers the following as
under:
a) To mobilize the resources of the
individual members for their collective
economic development and uplifting
the living conditions of the poor.
b) To create a habit of savings and
utilization of local resources in form of
utilising individual skills for group
interest.
c) To create awareness about rights that
help in financial assistance.
d) To identify problems, analyzing and
finding solutions in the group.
e) To act as a media for socio-economic
development of the village.
f) To develop linkages with institutions of
NGOs.
g) To help in recovery of loans.
h) To gain mutual understanding, develop
trust and self-confidence.
i) To build up teamwork.
j) To develop leadership qualities.
k) To use as an effective delivery channel
for rural credit.
Women Empowerment through SHGS
A self-help group (SHGs) is as an
instrument to change the conditions of
women socially and economically. Once
socio-economic experiment is 92 achieved
it would have implication on the overall
development of women. SHGs enable
economic, social, political and
psychological empowerment of women.
Economic Empowerment
The economic contribution of
women has been found to be related to her
role and status in the society. The Self-help
groups provide economic benefits to the
women by providing income generating
activities. Economic independence
facilitates in bringing about sexual equality
and increase in women’s income translates
more directly into family well being.
Social Empowerment
Self-help Groups improve the
quality of status of women as participants,
decision-makers and beneficiaries in the
social, democratic, economic and cultural
spheres of life. SHGs ensure the equality of
status of women as participants, decision-
makers and beneficiaries in the democratic,
economic, social and cultural spheres of
life.
Political Empowerment
SHGs as active, articulate and
organized citizenry act on a range of issues,

68
holding the Panchayats accountable in
terms of the use, production and
distribution of public resources for the
common public good. SHGs enable women
to develop their communication skills to
speak at the Grama Sabha, public meetings,
etc.
An SHG functions through its
regular meetings, where members perform
transactional activities and discuss over
different related issues. Social mobilization
through SHGs is inevitable for political
empowerment.
Psychological Empowerment
Self-help groups enhance the
equality of women as participants,
decision-makers and beneficiaries in the
democratic, economic, social and cultural
spheres of life. The SHGs inculcate a great
confidence in the minds of rural women to
success in their day-to-day life.
Effectiveness of Self-Help Groups in
Indian context
Self-help groups (SHGs) are fast
emerging as powerful tool of socio-
economic empowerment of the poor in our
rural areas. The self-help group is a small
body formed by the people for meeting their
specific objectives, particularly credit.
However Local literature shows that self-
help groups have been developed for a wide
range of populations, including the
mentally ill and their families, persons with
disabilities and their care-givers etc. SHGs
are initially formed on the foundation of the
accumulated endowment of bonding social
capital already existing in the community.
The social capital produced by the SHG as
it matures through creation of new ties and
linkages, strengthens the community’s
cooperative capacity to the achievement of
group government. When the SHGs grow
they begin to articulate the community
demands as they become aware of their
rights and therefore attitude of the
government bureaucratic officials changes
and they become more responsive to the
needs of the community i.e., with the
maturity of SHG the state-society
relationship begin to change at the local
level towards the better.
In this way, SHGs which were
originally established to produce economic
benefits for members eventually became an
associational framework for collaborative
actions that produce public goods. As a
result a range of other community-level
organizations emerge where often members
of the SHGs are recruited. Role of SHGs in
strengthening local governance and
political democracy can be described by the
fact that a number of SHGs members are
being elected in the Panchayti Raj system in
India, the lowest tier of local democratic
governance.
In self help groups it is assumed that
all poor households need to save and have
the inherent capacity to save small amount
regularly; easy access to credit is more
important than cheap subsidized credit
which involves intricate bureaucratic
procedures, the poor are the best judge of
their credit needs and are good users and re-
payers of credit when formed in group. A
notable feature of SHG is that before its
linkage with any financial institution, credit
discipline is imbibed among the member by
way of SHG with banks has improved the
socio-economic condition of its member by
way of positive impact on income, saving,
and self-confidence. The impact is more
pronounced in the case of SHGS linked
through NGOs. This and many other
aspects of rural credit delivery system need
to be studied in a greater depth.
SHGs have proved to be successful
in addressing the interests of women in a
sustained manner. They are extremely
useful in generating savings, ensuring
successful delivery of credit to individual
women and effecting recovery. In addition,
they serve as an ideal mechanism for
bringing omen out of their homes, making
them more articulate and honing their
leadership qualities and their skills as
motivators. Women led SHGs in Andhra
Pradesh have won laurels for their
exemplary performance.

69
Entrepreneurship through Self-Help
Groups
Self-Help Group (SHG) enables the
rural poor to earn their own livelihood
besides participating in the process of
development. The SHG scheme has been
extensively used by voluntary agencies for
a long time but has been incorporated in the
conventional development programmes
only recently. A typical rural women’s self-
help group is a good example of capacity
building for prospective entrepreneurs. Its
aims include enabling members with no
educational or industrial or entrepreneurial
background to become self-dependent and
selfreliant by developing and enhancing the
decision-making capacity of members and
instilling in them the strength and
confidence for solving their problems. They
provide poor people a forum where they can
learn about collectively mobilising and
managing money and matters. Few other
Central and State government schemes
aimed at capacity building of women and
others 39 for entrepreneurship include the
‘Stree Shakti’ programme in the dairy
cooperative sector in M.P., training-cum-
employment programme for women called
Swa-Shakti and Rashtriya Mahila Kosh
Project supported by the World Bank and
International Fund for Agricultural
Development (IFAD).
Self Help Groups: Path ways out of
Poverty in India
Self-help groups (SHGs) play today
a major role in poverty alleviation in rural
India. A growing number of poor people
(mostly women) in various parts of India
are members of SHGs and actively engage
in savings (in actual term Thrift) and credit
(S/C), as well as in other activities (income
generation, natural resources management,
literacy, child care and nutrition, etc.). The
S/C focus in the SHG is the most prominent
element and offers a chance to create some
control over capital. The SHG system has
proven to be very relevant and effective in
offering women the possibility to break
gradually away from exploitation and
isolation. Almost all major donor agencies
support SHGs in India in one way or
another and many success stories are
available, describing how membership in a
SHG changed the life of a particular
individual or group for the better.
Many NGOs are promoting the
SHG mechanism and linking it to various
other development interventions. Whereas
there is ample evidence that the SHG
approach is a very effective, efficient and
relevant tool for organizing and
empowering the poor, do arise with design,
development and introduction of
programmes to promote income generating
activities (IGAs) that will generate
sufficient, sustainable and regular income.
The approach towards poverty alleviation is
based on the formation of self-help groups
at the grass root level. This brings about the
necessity for organizing them in a group by
which they set the benefit of collective
perception, collective decision-making and
collective implementation of programme
for common benefits. This organization
holds the power and provides strength and
acts as an anti dote to the helplessness of the
poor. The group saving of self helps groups
serves a wide range of objectives other than
immediate investment. The approach has
evolved over the years in India. Before
understanding the strength of SHGs as a
tool in Poverty Alleviation, it is imperative
to understand the evolution of various
Poverty Alleviation programs in India.
Conclusion
Self Help Group is an important tool
which helps the rural women to acquire
power for their self supportive life and
nation building efforts. The empowerment
of women through SHGs would lead
benefits not only to the individual women
but also for the family and community as
whole through collection action for
development these SHGs have collection
action. Empowering women is not just for
meeting their economic needs but also more
holistic social development. The SHGs
empower women and train them to take

70
active part in socio-economic progress of
the nation. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru said,
“To awaken the people, it is women who
must be awakened; once she is on the move,
the family moves, the village moves and
nation moves.” Now the women are
awakened by the self help groups.
Self Help Group concept has been
mooted along the rural and semi urban
women to improve their living conditions.
Even though SHG concept is applicable to
men also in our country, it has been more
successful only among women. To reduce
poverty by enabling the poor household to
access gainful self employment and skilled
wage employment opportunities, resulting
in appreciable improvement in their
livelihood on a sustainable basis, through
building strong grass-root institutions of the
poor (SHGs) is now the main motive of the
most of the employment schemes. Thus
SHGs have been showing the way ahead to
alleviate the poverty of India along with
women empowerment.
References
1. Chandra P., Parida & Anushree Sinha
(2010) "Performance and Sustainability
of Self Help Groups in India: A Gender
Perspective" Asian Development
Review, Vol.-27(1), pp.80-103.
2. Jayaraman R. (2005) "Performance
Analysis of Fisherwomen SHGs in
Tamilnadu" final report submitted to
NABARD, pp.1-63.
3. Jayanthi. C “Empowering Women”.
Yojana, June 2001.
4. NABARD Report 2005-2008, Status of
Micro Finance in India 2009-10.
5. Sasikumar. D “Women Self Help
Groups in Tamil Nadu”, Readers Shelf,
Vol-6, No-2, 2009, pp.3-42.
6. Lalitha. N & Nagaraja B. S. (2002)
“Self Help Groups in Rural
Development” Dominant Publishers
and Distributers, New Delhi.
7. International Conference on Law,
Education, Business and Corporate
Social Responsibilities (LEBCSR-17)
Sept. 4-5, 2017, Budapest (Hungary).
8. Ritu Jain, (2003), “Socio-Economic
Impact through Self Help Groups”,
Yojana, 47(7), pp.11-12
9. Paramasivan C and Subathra S (2017),
Women Empowerment And
Entrepreneurship Through TAHDCO
In Tiruchirappalli District, Research
Explorer, Vol. V : Issue.14, January -
June 2017,pp .67-72
10. Veena Kumar “Socio-Economic Status
of Women in India”, Southern
Economist, August 1998.

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