Rural Women Entrepreneurship and Economic Development in Prakasam District

Abstract

In the history of human development, woman has been as important as man. In fact, the status, employment and work performed by women in society is the indicator of a nation's overall progress. Without the participation of women in national activities, the social, economical or political progress of a country will be stagnated. Rural women in India constitute 77 per cent of the female population. They share abundant responsibility and perform a wide spectrum of duties in running the family, maintaining the house hold activities like rearing, feeding, attending to farm labour, tending domestic animals and the like, even then they suffer from being both economically and socially invisible. The primary objective of the paper is to study the extent of rural women empowerment through various income generating activities

Prakasam district is one of the pioneering districts for the implementation of the DWACRA as pilot project in the Andhra Pradesh state along with Srikakulam and Adilabad. Presently, there are 3 Revenue divisions in Prakasam district consists of 35338 SHGs. Of these, Veligandla Mandal has been selected for this study, because of these SHGs are very successfully running their business in this Mandal.