Current Public Administration Magazine (February - 2014) - "Society and Culture"

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Society and Culture

Women's empowerment

The completion evaluation of the IFAD-supported Tamil Nadu Women's Development Project in India took place in late 1999. The project had aimed to bring about the social and economic betterment of women. The core mechanism was the women's self-help groups, which were set up with both financial (saving and lending) and community action objectives. At the time of the evaluation, a total of 5 207 of these groups had been formed, almost double the established target The evaluation noted that, at least in the latter phases, the project acted not as just "a credit-cum-subsidy project, but as a genuine process of empowerment." The evaluation concluded that such empowerment lay in the interaction between the social and economic aspects of the project.

Four of the main processes that could lead to women's empowerment, as defined by the IFAD evaluation, were:

changes in women's mobility and social interaction;
changes in women's labour patterns;
changes in women's access to and control over resources; and
changes in women's control over decision-making.

Changes in women's mobility and interaction: The evaluation found that women had become more mobile and begun to have new interactions with a range of officials. There was even a growing willingness on the part of group members to approach the Panchayats and Collectors with petitions or grievances. In all, the evaluation found that:

50% of women group members had visited new places and travelled longer distances; and
94% had experienced new interactions with staff of institutions such as banks, district and block development organizations, NGOs and the project itself.

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The study observes that this type of change was most likely to occur among women group members when:

the women involved were heads of households or were older;
the women involved had participated in training;
their group members had accessed a bank loan;
their group had undertaken community action initiatives; or
their group had been organized into a federation and encouraged to participate in special events (such as Women's Day, Rural Women's Day)

Changes in women's labour patterns: The evaluation did not find any major changes in gender division of labour. However, there were indications of such changes beginning. For instance, the group meetings themselves forced some of the husbands to look after children and feed themselves while their wives attended the meetings. The evaluation found that the extent to which men helped in reproductive tasks was related to the health of the woman (men helped more if women were sick), the type of household (men helped more in a nuclear household), and the gender and age of the children (men helped less if girl children were present to help).

There was comparatively greater change reported in non-domestic productive tasks. Not all the changes in such labour patterns can be viewed as beneficial to women.

Fully 30% of women who had taken bank loans reported a marked change in gender roles, and 70% reported a small change. (Greater change was reported by women heads of households, which implies that changes in the division of labour were not always involved, but that the women themselves adopted new productive roles.)
However, the income-generating activities of the majority of women in male-headed households (for which loans had been taken) continued to be managed by men (presumably, the women's husbands).
The workload of 94% of the women who had taken loans increased compared with their previous workload (many had been wage labourers).