undertakes a talk-centered analysis of the gram sabha with a focus on examining the oral participation of women in general and … women affiliated with microcredit self-help groups who have access to an associational life. The qualitative analysis of 255 … gram sabha transcripts from four South Indian states finds that women associated with microcredit self-help groups employ a …

The paper explores whether one of the largest programs in the world for women's empowerment and rural livelihoods, the … Indira Kranti Patham in Andhra Pradesh, India, has had an impact on the economic and social wellbeing of households that …), invest in education, and increase total expenditures (for the poorest and poor). Women who participated in the program had …

This paper uses primary data from rural north India to show that participation in a community-level female empowerment … support groups, literacy camps, adult education classes, and vocational training for rural women in several states of India … disentangle the program's mechanisms, separately considering its effect on women who work, and those who do not work but whose …

This paper investigates a women's self-help group program with more than 1.5 million participants in one of the poorest … rural areas of Northern India. The program has four streams of activity in micro-savings, agricultural enterprise training …

Self-help groups (SHGs) are the most common form of microfinance in India. The authors provide evidence that SHGs …, composed of women only, undertake collective actions for the provision of public goods within village communities. Using a … technology of providing public goods. Using first-hand data on SHGs in India, the paper tests the prediction of the model and …

equality and the empowerment of women. Yet, existing frameworks for women's agency measurement -- both disorganized and partial …Improving women's agency, namely their ability to define goals and act on them, is crucial for advancing gender … -- provide a fragmented understanding of the constraints women face in exercising their agency, restricting the design of quality …

research by economists, primarily involving impact evaluation, has measured empowerment as women's influence over household …The concept of empowerment is now widely used in several disciplines to characterize the states and social processes of … individuals and communities. In economic development, the concept has come to mean women's power and agency in all economic …

A review of rigorous evaluations of interventions that seek to empower women economically shows that the same class of … sufficient to grow women-owned subsistence-level firms. However, it can work if it is delivered in-kind to more successful women … microentrepreneurs, and it should boost the performance of women's larger-sized SMEs. Very poor women need a more intensive package of …

ability of a spouse to deny permission for the other to work outside the home, and raising women's minimum age of marriage …. Thus both access to resources and the removal of restrictions on employment served to strengthen women's bargaining … of the reform's impact. The analysis finds that women were relatively more likely to work in occupations that require …

This paper examines the relationship between caste and gender inequality in three states in India. When households are … literature: lower-caste women are more likely to participate in the labor market, have greater decision-making autonomy within …