Empowerment of Women through Microfinance – A Study in Nilgiri District, Tamilnadu

Abstract

Empowerment of women involves a holistic approach that covers social, political, psychological and economic aspects of women development. Of these, economic empowerment is of utmost significance in order to achieve a lasting and sustainable development. Microfinance is an innovative credit delivery mechanism and the scaling up of micro finance in India is mainly due to Self Help Group Movement (SHG). The group based programme meets the urgent credit needs of the poor who find it difficult to access credit from banks. The impact of microfinance on women development in Nilgiri, a backward district in Tamilnadu is presented in this paper. The level of empowerment of women SHGs and the level of empowerment along the four dimensions are measured in this paper. Various factors that contribute to empowerment also form part of the paper. A mathematical model indicating the statistical relationship for predicting empowerment from the given set of influencing variables is also examined.