Innovative Finance
August 1, 2024
Context
Empowerment enables individuals to fulfill their potential, participate more actively in society, and build confidence in their abilities. Empowered women positively impact their households, leading to outcomes such as improved child health, reduced fertility rates, and better allocation of resources. In Uttarakhand, a rural Himalayan state comprising less than 1% of India’s population, gender inequality remains stark. While the official literacy rate is 72%, effective female literacy may be closer to 50%. Although 43% of Uttarakhandi women work, 64% of these women were not paid for their work, and over 70% worked in agriculture, in family farmlands. Furthermore, a large proportion of Uttarakhandi women have limited decision-making power within their households: 23% have no say over household spending, nearly 43% lack final say on their own healthcare, and over half (55%) do not have the final say on large purchases. This reflects restricted lives with little say in the household or community for many women.
Solution
Mahila Samakhya is a government-led women’s empowerment initiative launched in 1988 and expanded to Uttarakhand in 1995. It combines literacy, vocational skills, and community support to empower women in rural India. Program workers, known as sahayoginis, engage in extensive dialogue with village women to tailor activities to local needs, ensuring community relevance and ownership. Participation is voluntary and unpaid, though women are reimbursed for travel and housing during district meetings.
Key interventions include biweekly literacy and adult education classes for clusters of villages, capped at 25 women per class. Weekly vocational training equips women with income-generating skills, leading many to work as midwives, tailors, herbal medicine makers, or grocers. These skills offer alternatives to unpaid agricultural labor and strengthen women’s household bargaining power. Support groups meet weekly and address domestic violence, dowry, alcoholism, and infanticide, providing a space for solidarity and confidence-building. Civic education and discussions on gender equality encourage political participation and challenge discriminatory norms. Special sessions are held on conflict resolution and household decision-making.
While initial resistance from villagers is common, this often decreases once the economic and social benefits become visible. The program’s adaptive, demand-driven structure, shaped by ongoing community input, has allowed it to build deep local trust and ownership. Internal evaluations track impact via educational, political, and attitudinal indicators, alongside focus groups assessing self-confidence and social capital.
Impact
The Mahila Samakhya program covered 2,416 villages in six of the thirteen Uttarakhandi districts. More than 42,000 women participated in this program, and over 2,500 girls have been educated in its centers. It has led to measurable improvements in women’s empowerment, particularly in physical mobility, access to employment, and political participation. Direct effects of improved education and vocational training include a rise in women’s reservation wages and increased access to employment schemes. For instance, over 80% of participants owned NREGS identification cards compared to just 14% of untreated women, indicating improved access to government employment programs, even among those not currently employed. Importantly, the program generated positive spillovers: non-participants in treated villages also experienced increases in mobility, employment access, and civic engagement.
Mahila Samakhya’s success extends beyond female empowerment, generating broad household benefits such as improved child welfare. Beyond individual impact, Mahila Samakhya has fostered broader social change by strengthening women’s roles in households and communities.