Self help group: dawn of women emancipation

Empowerment in the context of women's development is a way of comprehending and overcoming barriers in a woman's life through which she augments her capacity to contour her life and family environment. The prime purpose of this study is to explore the financial independence of the members of Self Help Group and the impact of micro-credit on emancipating rural women involved in SHGs. The results divulges that members’ have become financially independent so much so that they are able to create personal physical assets through savings and investments from the group's economic functioning. The empirical results in this study suggest that members of self help groups have become financial and economically empowered. Such financial empowerment is so evident in the areas of ability to independently manage loan products, increased savings and investments and superior capabilities to create physical assets. Further, it is found that women have become financially independent after joining groups. It can be said that economic empowerment leads to social empowerment which in turn paves the way for political empowerments too. Because finically independent and socially empowered women have the capability to analyze, organize and mobilize the surrounding situation for social transformation. States must extend a benevolent hand in providing training and development to the members of SHGs in the areas of marketing management which determines the long term sustenance of the model.