Self Help Groups and Women Empowerment – A Comparative Analysis of Districts in Tamil Nadu

Abstract

Entrepreneurship has been recognized as an essential ingredient of economic development. Very high literacy rate and lack of employment opportunities paved way for many unemployed youths including women to take up small-scale business units. Micro credit has become a popular tool in the fight against poverty. All over the world, economists and practitioners have adopted its topicality. At the same time, an increased awareness of the situation of women is noticeable. In particular, marginalized women are discussed since they face poverty, illiteracy, low caste/casteless and gender gap. Women empowerment is a common objective and aimed through the self Help Groups and Micro finance Schemes. Even though the policy implementation across the state is in the same way, the impact is different in rural and urban area. Among the districts also there are certain other factors which could decide the level of impact on the development of the status of women. This paper aims to study the relationship among Number of groups formed, Number of Women enrolled and Total Savings across the districts of Tamilnadu. It also aims to test whether there are significant differences between Rural and Urban areas with respect to women empowerment. Econometric tools like piece wise regression with dummy variables will be fitted to study the objectives.