Lifestyle improvements and economic empowerment of rural women: The role of rural banks

Socioeconomic status of the rural population is vital to the development of a country like India, where a majority of the population resides in villages. The corporate and rural banks and many other financial institutions are taking initiatives for women welfare, community welfare, farmer welfare, financial literacy, and education to empower the poor and underprivileged rural population. This article attempts to understand the role of rural bank and their services, in particular the effect of availing loan in changing the lifestyle, asset accumulation, education and empowerment of the rural women.

The hypotheses were framed to test the correlation between loan satisfaction and the dependent variables. A well-structured questionnaire was used to collect the data from women account holders in a rural bank in Kanniyakumari District of Tamil Nadu, India. The Chi-square test, mean score analysis and MANOVA analysis of data was performed.

Revealed that loan satisfaction positively influenced the economic and social aspect of rural women's life. Our study suggests that rural bank must prioritize and implement strategies to increase the awareness of the banking system and facilities, provide education, employment and financial-related schemes for the development of the rural population.