Helping Women Gain Control of their Lives

 Introduction

The concept of empowerment is defined as the process by which women take control and ownership of their choices. Entrepreneurship development and income generating activities are a feasible solution for empowering women.
The present case of India:

• India has witnessed a three-fold increase in population over the last half century without corresponding growth in opportunities, especially in rural areas.
• Women constitute 50% of the population and are the backbone of the family. In recent years, the traditional roles of women have undergone some changes due to economic needs and mainstream women’s contribution to the overall growth and development of society.

Role of Self Help Groups( SHGs) in empowering women:

• Self Help Groups (SHG) play an effective role for promoting women entrepreneurship and financial empowerment with the help of micro finance.
• The SHGs micro-credit mechanism makes the members to get involved in other community development activities.
• SHGs, such as Abhinav Farmers Co-operative Society, Grassroots, Grameen Bank, Assam Tea Corporation, Kudumbashree, Indira Kranthi Patham are actively participating in empowering women.These agencies through micro-credit is promoting the small-scale business enterprises, and its major aim is to alleviate poverty by income generating activities.
• The SHGs also contribute to Financial Security by helping in better recovery of loans, development of thrift and self-help among members, effective use of credit for the purchase of income generating assets, and empowerment of women.

Realising the above benefits of Micro Credit Government has launched several programmes to promote the same:

• Start up India is a flagship initiative launched by the Government of India to build a strong eco-system for nurturing innovation and startups in the country which will drive economic growth and generate large scale employment opportunities.
• Standup India scheme was launched on 5th April, 2016 to facilitate bank loans from Scheduled Commercial Banks (SCBs) between Rs.10 lakh to Rs.1 Crore to at least one Scheduled Caste (SC) or Scheduled Tribe (ST) and one woman per bank branch for setting up a greenfield enterprise in trading, services or manufacturing sector.
• The MSME Development Organisations (MSME-DO), the various State Small Industries Development Corporations (SIDCs), the nationalised banks and even NGOs are conducting various programs.
• Entrepreneurship Development Programmes (EDPs) has been launched to cater to the needs of potential women entrepreneurs, who may not have adequate educational background and skills.
• Trade related Entrepreneurship Assistance and Development (TREAD): It enables credit availability to interested women through NGOs. As such, women can receive support of registered NGOs in both accessing loan facilities, and receiving counselling and training opportunities.
• NITI Aayog launched the Women Entrepreneurship platform (WEFP). The initiative isaimed at building an ecosystem across India to realize for women across India their entrepreneurial aspirations, scale-up innovative initiatives and chalk-out sustainable, long term strategies for their business.
• The three pillars on which WEP is built : Ichha Shakti (motivating aspiring entrepreneurs to start their enterprise), Gyaan Shakti (providing knowledge and ecosystem support to women entrepreneurs to help them foster entrepreneurship) and Karma Shakti (providing hands-on support to entrepreneurs in setting-up and scaling up business).
• Mudra Yojana Scheme for Women: This scheme has been launched for individual women wanting to start small new enterprises and businesses as well as group of women wanting to start a venture together.
• Science For Equity Empowerment and Development (SEED) has the broad objectives of providing opportunities to motivated scientists and field level workers to take up action oriented and location specific projects aiming towards socio-economic upliftment of poor and disadvantaged sections of the society through appropriate science and technology interventions especially in the rural areas.

Conclusion:

Women entrepreneurship can make a particularly strong contribution to the economic well being of the family and communities. Even Sustainable Development Goals ( SDG) can be achieved only with women empowerment. Thus governments across the world as well as various development organisation should keep their focus on Women Development.

By: Atul Sambharia