Rural Women Empowerment: A Case Study on Scheduled Caste Population of Haora District, West Bengal, India

Abstract

Women empowerment refers to the creation of an environment for women where they can make decisions of their own for their personal benefits as well as for the society. It refers to increasing and improving the social, economic, political and legal strength of the women. But now a day, Empowerment of women has become a universal problem. In rural areas, this problem is very much prominent. Rural women have lack of basic education, suffer from malnutrition, engage with various household activities which are not considered as economic contribution, are dominated by men, have low work participation, get inequality in working place, have to get early married etc. These various problems related to women status are found frequently among Scheduled Caste population group as this group is one of the disadvantage sections in our society. Therefore, in the present paper, the status of rural scheduled caste women of Haora district in West Bengal has been examined not only for understanding present scenario of their empowerment, but also discover some new ways to make them more prosperous and more independent.