Empowerment of rural women through Panchayati Raj Institutions

Anuradha Ranjan Kumari^a, Janardhan Jee^a, Sambhu Kumar^a & Laxmikant^a
aP C, Krishi Vigyan Kendra (IIVR) Deoria, U.P,
^aICAR Complex for Eastern Region Patna,
^aSS CPRS, Sahai Nagar, Patna,
^aPC KVK Rampur SVPUA & T, Merrut

Received 30th June, 2013   ; Revised 25th July, 2013

Abstract : Women empowerment has been recognized as a central issue in determining the status of women. Empowerment covers aspects such as women control over materials and intellectual resources. Empowerment is a process, not an event, which challenges traditional power equations and relations. Abolition of gender based discrimination in all institutes and structures of the society and participation of women in policy and decision making process at domestic and public level are few dimension of women empowerment. The present study was an effort to know the extent of empowerment and associated problem of elected women members in panchayati Raj institutions. Total 75 women representatives randomly selected from Pusa and Kalyanpur block of Samastipur district in Bihar in which 40 villages in the total were drawn randomly from the two selected blocks. The tools used for collecting information were and interview schedule. In order to determine the conditions growing the empowerment of women the data were subjected to correlation, multiple regressions. Empowerment was taken as dependent variables. The finding reveled that about ten percent of these respondents were highly empowered with regard to “Construction, repair and maintenance” of public property. The association between empowerment and their age and participation was negative and significant at 1 percent level of probability. The results of correlation and multiple regression analysis between empowerment and socio-economic & psychological variables of elected village panchayat members was highly significant with caste, family size, family income and interaction style at 1 percent level of probability. The partial regression coefficient was significant only in case of two variables i.e. caste and age.

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