Women's Financial Empowerment through Access and Awareness: A Socio-economic Perspective from North East India

Aims: In this paper the financial empowerment of rural and urban women through access and awareness across the eight north eastern states of India has been analysed. The study aims at investigating the recent status of the access to money by employed women. Moreover, the extent and the variation in the women’s access to money, having bank accounts and familiarisation with micro credit programme in the study area has been analysed across the selected socio-economic factors like employment status, age groups and household structure. Data Sources: This paper is based on the secondary sources of data collected from National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) Reports 2019-21. The study area is the north east region of India comprising of eight states- Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim. Methodology: Methodology of the study is descriptive in nature using tabular and diagrammatic presentation and the significance level of the different variables has been analysed with the help of t Test and ANOVA. Results: It has been found in the study that, rural women in the north eastern states are lagging behind the urban women in accessing money in the way to decide the use of money. Employed women in Assam are in most disadvantageous position and employed women in Sikkim are in the most advantageous position in the context of financial empowerment. It has also been found that, the intensity of access to money, having bank accounts and familiarisation with micro credit programme of women increases with their age. Interestingly, women in the joint families as compared to the nuclear families have been found to be more active in all the three dimensions of access to financial services in the north east India. Conclusion: Across the eight north eastern states of India, women’s financial empowerment is still very low and inadequate in terms of accessing money, having bank accounts and familiarisation with micro credit programmes. Based on the vital findings of the study, policy suggestions are given.