Rural men don domestic roles, thanks to SHG initiatives

Can you imagine many men who never donned domestic roles are now sharing household works in rural India?

This is one of the findings of a national study, conducted on the impact of self help groups in the last two decades, which Union Minister of Rural Development Jairam Ramesh has released here.

Finance and managment

The study, conducted by the National Network of Enabling Self Movement (Enable) in eight States with uniform sample size showed that the financial empowerment of women in SHGs attracted active support from the male members of the family unlike earlier.

About 68 per cent of households showed that husbands are sharing household work bringing down the burden of women.

Empowerment

Not just bringing down the work burden, the women also confirmed a significant increase of 57 per cent in the habit of savings and higher availability of credit. A majority of women had reported that they had equal access to family income like her husband or senior male head of the family, with regard to sale of household produce and repayment of hand-loans.

Their share in decision on the use of a loan was also equal.

More support from male family members could be because of the realisation about benefits being brought in by the women as members of SHGs, the study said.

Social acceptability

There seems to be higher social acceptability for women at the village level.

About 59 per cent were now being invited to the Gram Sabhas while there was a noticeable increase in SHGs addressing village issues.

The study was conducted in Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashstra, Rajasthan and West Bengal.

According to a Nabard Microfinance report, there were about 79.6 lakh SHGs in the country with an estimated membership of 9.7 crore as on March, 2012. Their aggregate bank balance was Rs 6,551 crore.

>naga.gunturi@ thehindu.co.in

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