Economic empowerment among women in Meghalaya: A Way Forward

Women empowerment is the focal issue in today's world. It is the effort to identify strategies to uplift the status of women that is initiated globally. In spite of the fact, women seem to be still far in achieving their equal opportunities as their counterparts in all walks of life in the society. Economic empowerment is one of the important aspects for attaining empowerment because it implies to earning power for economic gains, control over the means of production, involvement in decision making on economic aspects and development in skill management. Among the noticeable efforts, Self Help Groups (SHGs) have become the alternative strategies in bringing changes in the life of the poor and marginalized group especially in rural areas of India since the past few years. Self Help Groups serve as the pedagogy to achieve economic upliftment. Many researches show that Self Help Groups have served as a pedagogy which does not solely curtailing to economic aspect of the poor and marginalized but have touched the other dimensions such as the personal, social and political aspect as well. The aim of this paper is to probe into the existing situation of the Self Help Groups as a means and strategy towards women empowerment through economic empowerment among the women in Meghalaya. The study was conducted in West Khasi Hills District of Meghalaya state. One block that is Nongstoin Community and Rural Development block was chosen from the said district and 20 women Self Help Groups were selected based on their year of formation and loan stages. From these Self Help Groups 60 members were chosen to collect the necessary primary data. The data was processed with Ms Excel and analysed with the help of SPSS package. The study shows that Self Help Group has served as a tool or a means that concertizes the women SHGs in the matrilineal society about the concept of women empowerment mainly focus on economic empowerment where they feel that they would have not realized about it since they are in the society which they seem to be empowered but they are fully not.