The Role of Self Help Groups in Empowering Women

In India the majority of women especially in rural areas depend on men for their livelihood. Women continue to be a voiceless section and economic value is not attached to a woman’s role. To mitigate the current situation empowerment is the need for ensuring a woman’s welfare and thereby the well-being of the entire household. Real empowerment can be achieved by attributing economic value to the contribution that a woman makes to her family and society. Considering their number of responsibilities women ought to be a powerful base ingredient of the social and economic setup of our country. Hence the researcher attempts in determining the role of Self Help Groups in empowering women at Krishnagiri District of TamilNadu as the total number of Self-Help Groups formed in the district possess their success rate placed in the second place in the State. As empowerment of an individual is a multidimensional aspect the researcher examines the performance of women in Self-Help Groups with stress on analyzing various dimensions of women empowerment namely social drivers economic drivers cultural drivers personal drivers and politico-legal drivers.