Manuscript History: Received: 15 March 2016 Final Accepted: 12 May 2016
Published Online: May 2016 Key words: Microfinance, Social empowerment, Self
Help groups, Etc. *Corresponding Author Shailaja Kheni. India is a nation
filled with tremendous wealth & prosperity. Among the successful emerging
economies in the world India occupies a prominent place. India’s performance in
recent years has been among best in the world. On the other side becoming more
complex because of the various Social, political, economical &
Technological changes occurring at a rapid pace for growth. India is filled
with regional, cultural and socio- economic differences that have made the
status of women complicated and her contribution often goes unrecognised. Due
to cultural and traditional aspects, a Women’s presence has been a question of
survival. She fears for society, lives in society with all problems as Indian
culture makes them to bear everything silently and run the family. It is more
difficult for women to get out of poverty than men because they lack money,
resources, land and property and get less paid than men for the same job
(Premchander 2009). Our Women have a great part to play in the progress of our
country, as the mental and physical contact of women with life is much more
lasting and comprehensive than that of men. Women must be empowered by
enhancing their awareness, knowledge, skills and technology use efficiency,
thereby facilitating overall development of the society. The early 90’s saw the
reshaping of strategies of socio –economic development and the emphasis
gradually shifted from “development to empowerment”. Women play a significant
role in domestic and socio-economic life of the society and therefore holistic
national development is not possible without developing this segment of the
society (Ravindra c satpute 2012). Low level of skills, lack of access to
training, facilities and credit, literacy, ignorance coupled with their
invisible contribution to family economy, restricted mobility as a result of
gender bias and lack of linkage facilities are some of the contributory factors
for the backwardness of the women in the rural areas. At this juncture,
organizing the poor women in a group is the need of the hour. Thus the SHG is
one that is considered as the movement of self development. The SHG is the
institutional informal setup through which the micro credit is routed by the
formal and semi formal micro finance institutions to assist the poor women. Now
a day’s women are depending on microfinance institutions than men. They believe
that a woman is a small credit risk and often benefits the whole family
(S.Sarumathi and Dr.K.Mohan 2011) The main aim of microfinance is to empower
women .This induced the researcher to focus more on the empowerment of women
who participates in Microfinance and its activities. Kalaburagi is considered
as one of the most backward districts of Karnataka. Majority of people in this
district are living in the rural areas and most of them depend upon Agriculture
for their livelihood. There are many Microfinance institutions which are
operating in the districts and the number of SHGs is in thousands. The number
of Groups is increasing year after year; this made an interesting fact to know
the reason behind this improvement. What makes women to join the Self Help
Groups, are they socially empowered. Therefore the Objective of the researcher
here is to study to what extent women beneficiaries of microfinance in
kalaburagi district have succeeded in achieving their Goals and have empowered
Socially. - See more at: .
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