ROLE OF MICROFINANCE IN ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN-A STUDY WITH REFERENCE TO KALABURAGI DISTRICT .pdf
Creators: name: Shailaja Kheni
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2021
Subjects: subject: 150299 Banking, Finance and Investment not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Economics and business
subject: FOS: Economics and business
subject: 150203 Financial Institutions (incl. Banking)

description: In the content of national development, Women’s participation in economic activity is of crucial importance as empowerment can give power to women to have control over the circumstances of their lives that include both control over resources and ideology, greater self confidence and an inner transformation of one’s consciousness that enables one to overcome external affairs.The one way towards empowerment is through economic development. This economic independence for women is the key driver towards eradication of this inequality and a way for forming inclusive growth strategy. Financial inclusion efforts are essential to bring those portions into mainstream as it denotes delivery of financial services at an affordable cost to the vast sections that include savings, credit, insurance, payments and remittances facilities. Therefore a potentially effective way to empower women is through access to credit that increases her opportunities to reach a higher level of empowerment through the possibility to obtain her own source of income and create a sense of security.Microfinance has developed as most important channels of accessing credit for the poor (Kabeer 1998)1. Through group lending techniques where the groups jointly are responsible for the management and repayment of each other’s loan as they serve as guarantors, it has been possible for poor, with no earlier credit history or collateral, to access credit.The status of women in India has been subject to great changes over the past few years. Women play a significant role in domestic and socio-economic life of the society and therefore holistic national development is not possible without developing this segment of the society .Till recently women under the Indian rural set up were not able to actively participate in income generating activity due to historical and social cultural reasons. Low level of skills, lack of access to training, facilities and credit, literacy, ignorance coupled with their invisible contribution to family economy, restricted mobility as a result of gender bias and lack of linkage facilities are some of the contributory factors for the backwardness of the women in the rural areas.For the last two decades, microfinance has been a very efficient tool for the provision of financial services to the poor. The term became a social trendsetter to prefer financial services to the poor women, who were previously considered non bankable as they have no security or property to give to the bank or to the money lenders. A wave of progress was imagined in the world with which low-income households will be having permanent access to a range of good quality financial services to finance their income generating activities, to build assets, to stabilize consumption, and to protect against risks Karnataka is India’s eighth largest State in terms of geographical size It has 30 districts and 176 Taluks and has a varied topography. Among which kalaburagi is the one the analysis or occupational structures of the district indicate that the district is economically backward with a large portion of population engaged in agriculture. Therefore a study is made to assess the Role of Microfinance in economic empowerment of women with reference to Kalaburagi district<br>