Towards Women's Empowerment and Poverty Reduction

Abstract

"Though women's empowerment was never an official objective of SAPAP*, when the former National Project Coordinator, SAPAP was approached by UNDP to join in a series of studies it was commissioning on the women's empowerment impact of micro-credit, he readily agreed as he felt that such a study would contribute immensely to institutional learning related to gender concerns. Both the former National Project Coordinator and the Consultant of UNDP strongly felt that the study should reverse the traditional hierarchical relationship between the "researcher" and the organisation and people that are being "researched", and contribute to institutional learning and development from a gender lens. In keeping with these principles, a research team was constituted comprising of the UNDP Consultant, the former National Project Coordinator, three SAPAP programme staff, and 54 investigators from three district offices....[T]he study examined empowerment at individual, collective and wider levels [in Mahbubnagar, Kurnool and Ananthapur districts] through semi structured interviews (using participatory methods) with individuals, SHGs [self-help groups], village organisations and mandal level federations. Impact on poverty and caste discrimination were examined at village, household and intra-household levels...

"There are three debates centering on micro credit, social capital, and feminization of poverty and women's empowerment. The first debate is on the potential and limitations of micro credit for women's empowerment, with one set of people holding the position that micro credit is the panacea for poverty reduction and women's empowerment, and another group arguing that this is far from true, and women's labour and time is infact exploited through such programmes. The second debate is on the potential and limitations of "social capital". One group believes that strengthening social capital-bonding, bridging and linking capital- can help people to come out of poverty and empower themselves, while another group posits that unless "physical capital" and "financial capital" is strengthened poverty reduction and women's empowerment will be a distant goal. A third debate has centered on whether focus on gender and poverty deflects attention from the more political agenda of women's empowerment. One position holds that poverty is feminized, and that donors and development agencies should focus on the interlinkage between gender, women and poverty. The other position is that evidence on feminization of poverty is weak, and conflating gender issues with poverty, takes attention away from the broader agenda of women's empowerment...[this paragraph is from Mayoux, 2001, Murthy R.K & L. Sankaran, 2001 and Insights, Issue No. 34, 2000]

"The findings from this study are presented in this report. The second section gives a profile of AP [Andhra Pradesh]and the three districts in which the study was carried out...The third section outlines the conceptual framework underpinning the study, as well as its scope, sample size, and the methods used. The fourth section examines impact of SAPAP on household poverty, and gender and caste specific dimensions of poverty of women and dalits. The fifth section examines impact on women's empowerment at individual level, group level (SHG, VO and MMS) and wider level. Issues of inclusion and exclusion and impact of women on the basis of headship, age, caste, ethnicity and religion are also examined in sections four and five. The concluding section summarizes key findings and pulls out lessons for the different stakeholders directly associated with the AP programme, as well as policy makers and planners of other poverty reduction programmes with a micro credit component. It also throws light on the ongoing debates on micro credit, social capital, poverty reduction and women's empowerment...

"It is...deep-rooted poverty...and its caste and gender specific dimensions that the project sought to address...[T]he project adopted a three-pronged strategy: social organisation, skill development and capital formation. As part of the social organisation programme, the poor were organized at three levels: hamlet/sub-hamlet level through small homogenous self help groups (SHGs), village level through village level organisations (VOs) and the Mandal level through the Mahila Mandal Samakhyas (MMS). Over the years, a few occupational or sectoral specific associations also emerged at the village level to address occupational or issue specific problems: labour associations, mining workers association, adolescent girls associations, water users' associations, watershed associations and so on.

"As merely forming groups was not enough for building human capacities, a strong emphasis was placed on training and skill development. SHG members were trained on conducting meetings, sanctions for non-attendance, election and rotation of group leaders, division of responsibilities for handling cash, decision making on lending, micro planning, IGPs, maintenance of records and book keeping and seed capital formation. VO leaders were trained on group formation, conflict resolution within SHGs, bookkeeping and government programmes. Training of VO leaders took place through the forum of monthly meeting of MMS, Mandal level Women's Conventions and exposure visits. To support social mobilization and capacity building, community volunteers (CVs) from amongst the villagers were identified whose responsibility was to cover 5-6 habitations. The Community Coordinators, who was normally a graduate with work experience in NGOs or non-formal education, supervised CVs in each Mandal. Substantial investment was made into training CVs and CCs on areas such as methodology of group formation, training book keepers and group leaders, project implementations, innovations happening elsewhere in social mobilization and gender and environmental concerns. Yet another group providing services to the group members are the village specialists in areas such as health, education, agricultural, animal husbandry, watershed management, social forestry, entrepreneurship development and appropriate technology. These specialists were provided training in their respective areas. It was envisaged that in the long run the groups - SHGs, VOs, MMS - themselves would pay them...

* Editor's note: SAPAP has been absorbed into the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP).

Footnote numbers were ommitted from this selection.