Empowerment of Rural Women through Fishery Based Self Help Groups in Chhattisgarh

The paper is based on a study conducted on the issue of women empowerment through their participation in self help group (SHG) based culture fisheries as prime vocation in Jashpur district of Chattishgarh state, India. The sample size consisted of eighty women SHG members representing thirteen bank linked fishery based women SHGs. Findings revealed that despite 54.09 per cent overall gain in empowerment index value of the respondents after they participated in culture fishery based activities and reflection of significant level of change in their unit empowerment index between before-after participation scenario for all the five dimensions of empowerment viz. decision making ability, spending ability, social participation, cosmopoliteness, and access to assets and resources, in 62 per cent of the cases only medium level of empowerment could be achieved by them to signify existence of further scope to still improve the empowerment status through considered interventions in regard to handicaps being faced by the surveyed women. Important problems as perceived by the respondents were recorded.