Gender Equity and the Empowerment of Poor Rural Women

Microcredit is an effective instrument that has been recognized to alleviate poverty, especially in developing countries such as Bangladesh. This study seeks to use microcredit as an instrument to bridge the gap between the accessibility of microcredit among poor rural women and sustainable socio-economic development, providing novelty to the concept of “sustainability of empowerment”. In addition, this study employed poor rural women to estimate the empowerment performance of microcredit borrowers compared to non-borrowers in the same socio-economic environment as it relates to microcredit in rural Bangladesh. A regression analysis was used to accomplish these objectives. This study also used propensity score matching techniques to find an easy way to access microcredit. The empirical results not only involve participation in microcredit accessibility but also the particular qualitative attributes of women empowerment. The results also suggest that sustainability is accompanied by affluence among microcredit borrowers, as indicated by women empowerment. The outcome of the empirical analysis shows that there is a significant impact of microcredit on increasing participation in the overall decision-making process, in legal awareness, independent movements, and mobility, as well as enhancing living standards to encourage sustainable women empowerment. This study recommends future investigations for microcredit providers to explore how to build an integrated, holistic approach to women empowerment in Bangladesh.

Download Full-text

Predictors of maternal health services utilization by poor, rural women: a comparative study in Indian States of Gujarat and Tamil Nadu

Journal of Health Population and Nutrition ◽

10.1186/s41043-015-0025-x ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 33 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Kranti Suresh Vora ◽

Sally A. Koblinsky ◽

Marge A. Koblinsky

Keyword(s):

Maternal Health ◽

Health Services ◽

Comparative Study ◽

Rural Women ◽

Tamil Nadu ◽

Health Services Utilization ◽

Maternal Health Services ◽

Indian States ◽

Services Utilization ◽

Poor Rural Women

Download Full-text

Self-confidence among poor rural women: Implications of transfer program in Bangladesh

AEA Randomized Controlled Trials ◽

10.1257/rct.4169 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Jinnat Ara

Keyword(s):

Rural Women ◽

Transfer Program ◽

Self Confidence ◽

Poor Rural Women

Download Full-text

Understanding ICT

Advances in Electronic Government, Digital Divide, and Regional Development - Digital Public Administration and E-Government in Developing Nations ◽

10.4018/978-1-4666-3691-0.ch012 ◽

2013 ◽

pp. 224-247

Author(s):

Nazmunnessa Mahtab ◽

Nehal Mahtab

Keyword(s):

Mobile Phones ◽

Rural Women ◽

Rural Areas ◽

New Technologies ◽

Ground Level ◽

Global Level ◽

Poor Countries ◽

Poor Women ◽

Ict For Development ◽

Poor Rural Women

This chapter focuses on how e-Governance empowers women, specifically poor rural women. ICT for Development emerged as a new area of work in the mid-1990s at a time when the potential of new technologies was starting to be better understood. In poor countries, particularly rural women in Bangladesh, access to ICTs is still a faraway reality for the vast majority of these women as they are further removed from the information age, as they are unaware of the demonstrated benefit from ICTs to address ground-level development challenges. The barriers they face pose greater problems for the poor rural women, who are more likely to be illiterate, not know English, and lack opportunities for training in computer skills. Access to ICT can enable women to gain a stronger voice in their government and at the global level. ICT also offers women flexibility in time and space and can be of particular value to women who face social isolation, especially the women in the rural areas in Bangladesh. To represent the use of ICT, this chapter focuses on the use of “Mobile Phone” by the rural women of Bangladesh and how the use of mobile phones have helped in empowering rural poor women in Bangladesh.

Download Full-text

The Face of Food Insecurity is Female: A Post- Colonial Feminist Argument for Rural Women

African Journal of Gender, Society and Development (formerly Journal of Gender, Information and Development in Africa) ◽

10.31920/2634-3622/2021/v10n1a5 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 (1) ◽

pp. 99-116

Author(s):

H.G. Van Dijk ◽

◽

H.M. Nkwana

Keyword(s):

Food Security ◽

Gender Equity ◽

Rural Women ◽

Qualitative Content Analysis ◽

Political Dimension ◽

The Sustainable Development ◽

Post Colonial ◽

Global Priority ◽

The Face ◽

Zero Hunger

The achievement of food security is a global priority, but remains a particular challenge for rural women. International frameworks, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to ensure zero hunger, improved nutrition and the promotion of sustainable agriculture. Yet, while the SDGs have significantly broadened the scope of targets focused on achieving gender equity and women's empowerment, as well as recognising that gender equality has a social, economic and political dimension, they remain silent on how substantive gender justice would be achieved. Using a post-colonial feminist perspective, the paper argues that the political, economic and social dimensions, specifically regarding food security, are interconnected and rooted in power inequality and patriarchy. The paper uses a qualitative content analysis to determine the extent to which policy frameworks developed in support of rural women in South Africa are gendered to reflect the experienced realities of women in rural, culturally traditional communities.

Download Full-text

Precarity, aspiration and neoliberal development: Women empowerment workers in West Bengal

Contributions to Indian Sociology ◽

10.1177/0069966719861758 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 53 (3) ◽

pp. 392-421 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Srila Roy

Keyword(s):

Rural Women ◽

West Bengal ◽

Local Communities ◽

Women Empowerment ◽

Women's Development ◽

Feminist Activism ◽

Female Workers ◽

Neoliberal Development ◽

Surplus Population ◽

Poor Rural Women

While there is a long tradition of interpellating poor rural women to carry out the state’s development and modernising goals in local communities, neoliberal development has greatly expanded the remit of this subjective call but without accompanying material changes. In this article, I consider the precarious category of female workers produced by an NGO in West Bengal, out of a surplus population of poor, working-class and, generally, Scheduled-Caste rural women who were themselves beneficiaries of feminist-inspired development. Ambivalently positioned within this institutional site—as volunteers and not as employees—these workers had to manage new forms of risk and precarity over existing ones. Such precarity was not only material. It was especially manifest in new sets of aspirations that sustained the unrealisable promises and potentialities of the related processes of the NGOisation of feminist activism and the restructuring of women’s development under neoliberalism.

Download Full-text