Women empowerment and self help group a structural paradigm to challenge the status of girl children

Abstract

Discrimination against the girl children is a multidimensional issue and strikes at the heart of our society. The issue necessitates a multidisciplinary approach for efficient progress for mitigation of such discrimination keeping status of women a paramount significance in the process of empowerment. Amongst several governmental and non-governmental endeavours, SHG programme is a structural initiative, which emphasizes upon strengthening women at multiple levels- cognitive, psychological, economic and social . SHG is a structural arrangement which stresses the need for empowerment of members without any redistribution effort of the extant power structure. The emphasis is on status enhancement of women with intrinsic and extrinsic ramifications. However, questions asked whether it would be an enduring arrangement to target newlinehuge section of human resource at their adulthood. As women empowerment is a holistic and multidimensional process, it entails a careful collaborative effort to tackle the problem at their rudimentary stage .Thus, being a SHG member not only holds the responsibility of making themselves strengthened at social, economic or political level but also to create a conducive environment for their subsequent generation by making requisite systemic arrangement for girl children, making them free from gender discrimination, thus shaping the journey of girl children to women healthy, resourceful and valuable for themselves, families, communities and nation as a whole .Therefore present study is an effort to study the impact of women in selfhelp group on their daughters with following objectives- 1- To create an in-depth understanding of the process through which women of Self Help Group (SHG) evolve in transforming their status of empowerment with respect to their level of economic independence, awareness and participation in decision-making process. 2- To compare and understand the perception and contribution of women towards the status of girl children with focus on education, nutrition, health care, participation in domestic activities and traditional practice. 3- To Compare and analyze the experience of girl children and their perception of the mother s role in their upbringing. 4-To analyse the possible implication of intergenerational change in women s role on the status of girl children. The comparative and qualitative data from seven SHG women and seven Non-SHG women along with their respective daughters (of age between 10-14 years ) from two SHGs in the slum Dharavi, Mumbai gave an insight about the impact of SHG or Non SHG women on their daughters upbringing . The methods such as in-depth interview, anthropometric measurement (weight and height), dietary survey (24 hours dietary recall) were applied to extract necessary subjective and objective information from the target group. newline