Women empowerment and inclusive growth

Women constitute of nearly half of the nation's population. It is only from the Fifth Five Year Plan onwards that their role has been explicitly recognized with a marked shift in the approach from women welfare to women development and empowerment. Financial Inclusion can be described as the inability of individuals’ households or groups to access necessary financial services in an appropriate form. Empowering women connotes to increasing the spiritual, political, social or economic strength of women and their communities. There came the emergence of Self-help group (SHG) which is the brain child of GRAMINBANK of Bangladesh formed by Prof. Mohamad Yunuf in the year 1975. It is “by the women, of the women and for the women”. SHG, as an acronym, has entered the lexicon of developmental credit and has become the mainstay of microfinance.

Financial inclusion is no longer just one of many objectives it is an integral part of the growth process and indeed the structure of growth sought to be achieved most likely to achieve inclusiveness.

This paper studies the various perceptions and problems faced by the financial institutions and NGOs by offering credit to the SHGs in the array of empowering women. It is further studied whether the finance procured are well utilised in the proper channel and whether their investments are frugally deployed. The paper goes deep into roots to see what the SHGs do with their savings and the money raised from government and banks.