Women's Education and Empowerment in Rural India

362 Pages·2019·5.908 MB·English

by  Jyotsna Jha, Neha Ghatak, Niveditha Menon, Shreekanth Mahendiran, Priyanka Dutta

Women’s Education and Empowerment in Rural India
Jyotsna Jha presently heads Centre for Budget and Policy Studies
(CBPS), located in Bangalore, India. CBPS is an independent
non-profit, non-governmental organisation that focuses on research
in gender, education, social and economic policies, budgeting,
decentralization and governance issues. Trained as an economist,
Jyotsna has significant experience of working on development-
related issues.
Neha Ghatak is a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for
Budget and Policy Studies where her engagement has primarily
been with gender studies and the education sector. She has worked
on several projects related to women’s empowerment, agency and
related issues.
Niveditha Menon is a feminist sociologist by training. She is a Senior
Research Advisor at the Centre for Budget and Policy Studies. Her
primary focus has been in the domain of gender, more specifically,
in the areas of domestic and sexual violence, sexuality, and women’s
empowerment.
Priyanka Dutta is a qualitative sociologist by training, Priyanka
has worked at the Centre for Budget and Policy Studies (CBPS)
Bangalore from September 2016 to February 2018 primarily on
gender-related issues.
Shreekanth Mahendiran is a Research Advisor at the Centre
for Budget and Policy Studies, Bangalore, India. His research
primarily focuses on the applied microeconomics and development
economics to examine the questions on access, welfare, and
impact assessment. He focuses primarily on the areas related to
education, gender, empowerment, and health in the context of the
developing world..
Women’s Education and Empowerment in Rural India, as its title
suggests, is about understanding women’s empowerment in rural India.
In this extremely important book, Jyotsna Jha, Neha Ghatak,
Niveditha Menon, Priyanka Dutta, and Shreekanth Mahendiran
explore the pathways and roadblocks to women’s empowerment.
They do this through an evaluation-centered research on Mahila
Samakhya in Bihar, a Government of India-funded scheme of
the Education Department, aimed at providing ‘education for
women’s equality’.
The book evaluates the impact of the scheme and its interventions
on the lives of women from the most marginalised communities.
It traces the meaning and the process of the various facets of
empowerment as well. These include how women’s empowerment
effect their mobility; savings; participation in economic activities;
self-efficacy; decision-making and political participation.
The empowerment of women goes beyond these and has an
intergenerational impact as well through the choices they are able
to make, about their daughters’ education and marriage; And still
beyond these, once empowered, they are able to adjust to and
negotiate with regard to the dominant social institutions such as
the family, and policy processes and their outcomes.
Women’s empowerment raises some searching questions about
the developmental implications of women’s education, and social
policy, planning and implementation.
This book will be of enormous value to government departments,
and all university departments teaching social sciences specially those
teaching politics, education, sociology and gender studies.

Women’s Education
and Empowerment
in Rural India
Jyotsna Jha, Neha Ghatak,
Niveditha Menon, Priyanka Dutta
and Shreekanth Mahendiran
Firstpublished2019
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Acknowledgements
This book is part of a larger study to understand the effect of the
Mahila Samakhya programme on the economic empowerment
of rural women in India. The study is funded by the International
Development Research Centre, Canada, under the Growth and
Economic Opportunities for Women (GrOW) programme. The
GrOW programme is a multi-funder partnership between the
UK Department for International Development and the Hewlett
Foundation. We thank all our funders for their continued support
and encouragement in the face of unexpected hurdles and difficulties.
This book would not have been possible without their faith in our
ability to make the best of a dynamic situation.
Our special thanks to the ex- and current administrative teams
at Mahila Samakhya (both Karnataka and Bihar) including Sister
Sujitha, Pushpa, Cynthia and Amrutha, who went out of their way to
help us with this study. Their stories and their experiences immensely
added to this study. We would like to thank R.S. Singh who was
extremely supportive of our efforts in the field and helped us with
his insights to deal with any difficulties we encountered. We would
also like to thank Uma Mahadevan who was greatly supportive of
our advocacy efforts related to Mahila Samakhya and of our efforts
to provide evidence-based research to construct sensible policies for
women’s empowerment.
This research was part of a collaborative effort of different
organisations. We would like to thank Sunai Consultancy who have
been enthusiastic, methodical and committed in their endeavour to
viii Acknowledgements
collect data for us. We benefited greatly from their understanding of
the geographical and political landscape of Bihar. We also want to
thank IFMR who collaborated with us for our work in Karnataka. The
study also greatly benefited from the systematic document review
conducted by our partner organisation, Educational Research Unit
(ERU). Their clear understanding of the institutional processes as
well as their detailed analysis of the documents collected enhanced
our understanding of the importance of contextual influences.
We would be remiss if we do not thank our participants – MS
sangha women, MS sahayoginis and MS administrative staff – in all
three districts who welcomed us to their homes and into their lives.
Their willingness to share their knowledge, insights, and their lives
greatly transformed and enriched this study. The lessons learnt
from them will be treasured far beyond the boundaries of this study.
Our colleagues at Centre for Budget and Policy Studies (CBPS)
have supported us in various capacities in completing this study. We
want to thank all remaining members of the GrOW research team:
Srinivas Kumar Alamuru, Padmaja Pancharatnam, Anita Gowdar,
and Bhavani Seetharaman. We also want to thank our administrative
staff Thyagarajan R., Mrinalika Pandit, Usha P.V. and Ramesh
K.A. for all of their help in supporting us navigate multiple activities
in multiple spaces. We thank Ashley Tellis for his editing skills. Our
colleague Lokesh deserves special mention for her ethnographic work
in Bihar. But for her, we would not have been able to complete the
work in the manner as it is now. Finally, we thank Megha Ghosh
and her team at Skewed Parallel for developing the infographics
used in this book.
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
List of Tables xiii
List of Figures xv
Abbreviations xvii
1. Empowerment, Education and Social Change: 1
Understanding the Conceptual Context of
Mahila Samakhya
1.1. Introduction 1
1.2. Women’s empowerment: Conceptual and historical 3
understanding
1.2.1. Conversations of power 5
1.2.2. Influence of the feminist movement 7
(WID), Women and Development (WAD) and the
capabilities approach
1.2.3. Discourses of development 12
1.2.4. Definitions of empowerment 15
1.3. The story of MS 18
1.3.1. Genesis, coverage and objectives 18
1.3.2. Funding and withdrawal: Refection of wider pattern 21
1.3.3. The philosophy and structures of MS 23
1.4. Rationale, research questions and the research sites 34
1.4.1. Boundaries and definitions used in our research 36
1.4.2. Research methods 42