ASSOCIATION BETWEEN THE ATTITUDE OF FARM WOMEN TOWARDS SELF-HELP GROUPS AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS

Poverty, illiteracy, and a lack of skills make it common for the poor to rely on high-interest moneylenders. Since these issues call for communal effort, self-help groups (SHGs) have the potential to be a change agent. SHGs are loosely structured, peer-run organizations made up of people from similar socioeconomic backgrounds that collaborate to achieve shared objectives. The study was carried out in the tehsils of Rahata and Srirampur, utilizing a sample size of 150 respondents from the Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra state. The study also included around 500 women SHG members who were employed by KVK Babhaleshwar in the Ahmednagar district. The specific objectives of the study were to examine the socioeconomic psychological profile of female SHG members participating in a range of activities, gauge women’s attitudes about SHGs, and examine how socioeconomic and psychological traits relate to attitudes. Relational analysis revealed that, at the 0.01 level of probability, the independent variables-education, yearly income, occupation, income from SHGs, and social participation-showed a positive and significant correlation with attitude. Meanwhile, at the 0.05 percent probability level, the variables-economic motivation and market orientation-showed a significant correlation with attitude. The null hypothesis was thus rejected for those factors, but it was accepted for the following variables: age, family size, and land ownership-all of which showed no discernible relationship with attitude.