Women empowerment and economic development: A study on women self helf group (WSHG) in Cuttack District of Odisha

The Self-Help Group (SHG) movement in India has been working in the right direction in empowering women and eradicating poverty in the rural and urban areas. Many women in India strongly believe in the movement and hold it responsible for improving their livelihoods. The present study is an attempt to analyze the role and performance of SHGs in promoting women's empowerment in Cuttack District of Odisha. The broad objective of the study is to analyze the operating system of SHGs for mobilization of saving, delivery of credit to the needy, repayment of loans and in building up of opinion of SHG members regarding increase in the power of decision making. The present study addresses women empowerment through study address women empowerment through micro enterprises in Odisha. It based on the Condition, family background, education level, and size of the family. Both primary and secondary data are collected and are analyzed in demographic information. The purpose of the research is to advance a new understanding of gender as a routine accomplishment embedded in everyday interaction to do so entail a critical assessment of existing perspective on gender. Descriptive Statistics including frequencies, percentage, mean and stand deviations were carried out to draw meaningful interpretation of the results and to find out the reason for joining the micro enterprises. The result of the study revealed that micro enterprises programmes have had greater impact on both social and economical aspect of the rural women in Odisha. The successful functioning of micro enterprises provides economic independence to women leading to their empowerments.