MARKET RESEARCH

REPORT ON

FINANCIAL EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN

Submitted By

Tanay Mishra
1. Introduction

Empowerment is defined as the ways and measured chalked out to increase motivation, self-
determination and autonomy. Governments, Private players, and UN have identified
Empowerment of women as one of the most important issue. The socio-economic and
cultural development of women is necessary for better economic growth. It is imperative that
women get the same rights, opportunities and access to education, work, representation and
wages as men to empower her. When women have same rights, work at decent workplace
and earn better wages, their role in family decision making process increases as well. There
are numerous factors that contribute majorly in empowering women; (i) Employment - In a
study conducted (Carol Vlassoff, 2013) it was found that women employment does not only
bring financial stability in the rural families, but it also ensures better health and overall
wellbeing of neighbourhood; (ii) Education- One of the other measures seen to be bringing
women at par with men is education. Education helps women to explore more opportunities
and helps to educate the whole family as well; (iii) amenities – basic facilities include health
centres, water availability, electricity are indirect factors that contribute; (iv). Government
schemes like MNREGA, micro-credit/financing, MUDRA schemes, DAY scheme – micro-
financing women is more successful as they do not misuse money and responsibly use it for
betterment, the MNREGA and MUDRA schemes help to provide employment and loans
respectively and DAY scheme has been helpful in providing skills training to the poor; et
cetera. An empowered woman has more power and can demand attention from policy
 makers. She can influence the policy makers to generate positive responses, elimination of
exploitation and demand better use of social resources. This will also lead to improvement in
her socio –economic status.

The contribution of Women towards India’s GDP has been calculated around 18 percentage.
And 25 percent of total workforce is female. It was estimated that and empowered women
has potential to contribute additional 4 trillion in US Dollars in Asia itself. The education
level of women have considerately increased (economic survey, 2017) over the years.
Women are now more involved in their health making decision and median age of first
childbirth has increased, and there has been significant decrease in physical or emotional
violence. The environment for Women in India has been improved significantly in the last
decade. The Government of India has also created forty-five lakh Self-Help Groups as they
have greater impact on both economic and social aspects of the beneficiary. This will help in
accommodating more women in workforce in agriculture or in industry. The women
empowerment will promote development of neighbourhood, eradicating poverty –by
providing her with employment and micro-crediting; and facilitate India’s development. The
concerned factors can be broadly divided in to Personal factors, and Environmental or
sociological factors.

1.1 What is empowerment?

Empowerment is nothing but giving power to an individual to carry out a particular task or to
achieve a particular end goal (Qudrat-I-Elahi,2003). Empowerment is a model that is used by
many areas and subjects: societal development, mental health, occupation, education,
economics and social interactions. .Empowerment is a concept that cannot be identified in
action, but it can definitely be identified when it is absent (Rapport, 1984). Dr. Lakshmi
Tulasi Devi Surapaneni et. al (2015) defined empowerment as the process of challenging
existing power relations and gaining greater control over the sources of power. Empowerment
is a process of awareness and capacity building leading to greater participation to greater
decision making power and control to transformative action.
2. Research Objectives:

The objective of the Study is to identify the various factors that influence the empowerment
of rural women in Telangana State.

3. Hypothesis:

The model is taken as the base idea for conducting this study. The aim of the paper is to
understand the financial empowerment and its driving determinants and consequents.

H1: Financial Empowerment will have a positive impact on women’s productivity.

H2: Women productivity will have a positive impact on their self-satisfaction.

4. Research Method:

The objective was to study the financial empowerment of women in rural Telangana state, the
district of Hyderabad was chosen due to its proximity to the researcher. The researchers
collected responses from neighbouring villages and colonies like Shankarapally,
Valajaraopeta, Kokapet and Narsingi among others. The targeted sample size of the study
was 250. The achieved sample size was 92, where the data was collected from different
villages of Telangana state, which consists of both employed and unemployed women. The
questionnaire was constructed to collect the personal identifier information measure the
financial empowerment indicators among the rural women, these indicators covered the
socio-economic and cultural dimensions.

RESULTS

KMO and Bartlett's Test

Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling
.770
Adequacy.
Bartlett's Test of Approx. Chi-Square 4598.489
Sphericity df 425
Sig. .000

 Benefits: The benefits factor includes the benefits/schemes provided by the

government, ease of availing bank loan, access to productive technique.
 Decision making and equality, this factor measures the decision making power of
women in spending and investment decisions, their freedom to movement. This factor
dictates that respect, gender equality and equal pay; play crucial role in their
empowerment. The decision making power and a gender neutral environment go hand
in hand in this factor.
 Social empowerment: The social empowerment factor is related to societal indicators
that make women feel empowered. Mutual respect, domestic peace and prosperity,
educational facilities in neighbouring area are the variables that make up this factor.
 Economic empowerment: This factor includes Microfinance, Self Help group and
Professional equality.
5. DISCUSSION
We can conclude that, the factors that contribute towards women empowerment. They
are; Decision Making and Equality, Social Empowerment Now, every women has a set of
needs and wants, therefore if these factors help in satisfying her needs and wants it will
increase the productivity of women and which in turn lead to an increase in self-
satisfaction.

6. LIMITATIONS
 The questionnaire used in the research is structured, thereby the interviewer’s
point of view can influence the questionnaire.
 Also, as there were limited open ended questions, therefore the answers and the
quantity of data were limited. Probing to an extent was only possible.
 The research was confined to one district/areas/locality, hence the findings are
prone to social desirability bias, as a single district/area/locality can’t represent the
entire state.