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“Every woman will tell the curious that with the disappearance of the spinning wheel vanished India's happiness and prosperity”. – Mahatma Gandhi
Empowerment as a process of awareness and conscientization, of capacity building leading to greater participation, effective decision-making power and control leading to transformative action. This paper focuses to study the role of microfinance on urban women members of SHGs empowerment with special reference to Lawspet constituency, Puducherry Region. This study is to cover the Lawspet constituency and the study area is having 98 Self Help Groups out of those 100 SHGs members were randomly selected based on purposive sampling method. The major findings from the study are the Around 44 per cent of the members fall in the age group of 26–35 years, About 72 per cent of them have got married, Around 42 per cent of the members are doing cooli/labour work under somebody, Members of SHG's have been much benefited through SHG's in respect of the variables, encouraging saving habit 62.02 mean scores (first rank) and Major problems faced by members of SHGs are Lack of Leadership qualities and lack of accessing the credit sources.
In a nutshell, Self Help Groups help the urban slum members are able to improve the socio-economic conditions, standard of living, women literacy level, decision-making, participation of social awareness programs, participation of training programs, participation of political activities, starting of new business enterprise/income generating activities, offer employment opportunities to neighbors etc. In Pondicherry regions there is no specific rule and regulations for non-government organizations micro finance activities therefore the government should make appropriate policy to monitor them and also helps the urban slum women to up-lift their socio-economic conditions through Micro-Credit facility with subsidy to those who are below poverty line.
