Women empowerment and forest conservation: Case study in Simlipal Forest, India

This study aims to portray the day-to-day activities of women at Simlipal forest region, India, and calculates the score of women empowerment. The study constructs a Composite Women Empowerment Index, following the framework cited by Kabeer (1999, 2009, and 2010) on women empowerment. With the inclusion of development intervention programmes in forestry analysis and analysing its effects on women empowerment, this study extends the Kabeer’s framework. Therefore, the present study considers four dimensions - access to resources, agency, development intervention and outcome, to measure women empowerment, where each dimension consists of several indicators. Exploratory Factor Analysis technique is employed to assign the respective weights for the indicators. The findings show that the composite score of women empowerment is very low in the Simlipal region; which calls for government intervention, and also initiatives from the local non-governmental institutions, to ensure well-being of Simlipal women. Further, gender mainstreaming and support from male counterpart come out as crucial in our study for economic and social upliftment of women. Eventually, this upliftment is expected to be helpful in maintaining sustainable development.