Scale Development for Women Empowerment : A Footprint

Womens’ empowerment is one of the imperative issues of development. It is expected that women’s empowerment through access to savings and credits, employment, income opportunities, consumption, mobility, education, health, control over asset, personal security and participation in the political process will improve the well being of women (Mayoux, 2005). More female economic power might help reduce corruption, conflict and violence in their nations (Blumberg, 2005). This paper discusses the measurement [Pedhazur & Pedhazur (1991), Hinkin, T. R. (1998), Lopez-Claros, A. and Zahidi, S. (2005)], the process of women empowerment and empowerment evaluation (EE) process (Medatwal, C. 2013). It explains the measurement scale of women empowerment which refers various dimensions. For the purpose of review, past researches, empowerment models and most commonly used measurement scales were studied. For the development of womens’ empowerment indicators with reference to scale, numbers of items are arranged under empowerment dimensions, wherever necessary. In this paper I will invent and list new identified dimensions for evaluating women empowerment through responses from survey across India. This paper reveals essential strengths in the prevailing effort on women’s empowerment that adds required indicators. In whole the developed scale provides the groundwork for further evaluation of womens’ empowerment