Elected Women Panchayat Samiti: An Structural Arrangement for Farm Women Empowerment in India

Abstract

Women represent almost half of the human resources and half the potential in all the societies. India being no exception to  it and, therefore, the employment and autonomy of women and level of women's social achievement are the indicators of  sustainable development. Empowerment is a process, not an event, which challenges traditional power equations and  relations. Abolition of gender-based discrimination in all institutions and structures of the society and participation of  women in policy and decision making process at domestic and public levels are few dimensions of women empowerment.  The present study was an effort to know the extent of empowerment and associated problem of elected women members in  Panchayati Raj institutions. Total Twenty Three women representatives were randomly sampled from Pusa and  Kalyanpur block of Samastipur district in Bihar province in Indiafrom the 40 randomly drawn villages from the two  selected blocks of the above districts. The tool used for collecting information was pre-structured interview schedule and  data were collected through personal interview method. In order to determine the conditions sowing the empowerment of  women the data were subjected to correlation and multiple regressions analysis. Their extent of empowerment was taken  as dependent variables. The finding revealed that 21.73 percent of the respondents were highly empowered with respect to  “Health welfare and Development of Public Property.The association between empowerment and farm womens' age was  negative but highly significantly associated (P<0.01). The results of correlation and multiple regression analysis between  empowerment and Socio-economic & Psychological Variables of elected women PanchayatSamiti members was highly  significant with variables like caste, family size, family income and interaction style (P,0.01). The partialregression co efficient were significant only in case of two variable i.e. caste and age.