Main Article Content
Abstract
Empowerment is a continuous intrinsic process of growth, influenced by contextual elements, and enabling factors. The Self Help Group movement in India is a domain for collective identity, voice, and representation. Women have used these spaces as an economic means to pool savings for borrowing by individual members. The limited economic power gained by the women can be expanded to become potential business enterprises, with an improvement in their social, economic and educational empowerment levels. Empowerment can be gained with knowledge, information, capital, networks, collaborations, managerial capabilities and self efficacy. The aim of this research is to measure the level of empowerment among women members of seven Self Help Groups in Valayankulam Panchayat, Madurai District. The researcher studied the socio demographic characteristics of the respondents to identify the various dimensions involved in the empowerment process and suggest suitable remedial measures for improving the level of empowerment. Descriptive research design was used and the researcher collected 79 samples using simple random sampling method for this study. The result reveals that more than half 53.2 percent of the respondents have low level of empowerment and less than half 46.8 percent of the respondents have high level of empowerment.