Tsunami left behind huge and widespread destruction in the coastal villages of Kerala.
Majority of the coastal-dwelling people were affected by the tragedy. Besides the loss of human lives, fishers also suffered loss of their „livelihood capitals‟. In order to provide relief and rehabilitation to the affected, Department of Fisheries, Kerala implemented multiple programs, which were christened under a common livelihood program named
“Theeramythri” under the Society for Assistance to Fisherwomen (SAF).The SAF visions to initiate, encourage and strengthen locally organized activity groups among fisherwomen, thereby providing assistance for expertising their business development skill, resource utilization and management, performance improvement, networking and marketing. The Theeramythri programme facilitates and handholds fisherwomen to engage in gainful self-employment for their economic and social emancipation. Over the last decade, SAF carried out commendable actions with around thousand enterprise groups with minimal initial outlays of less than 0.2 million rupees. SAF extends their financial and technical support right from the selection of enterprises, capacity building, branding and marketing, technology improvement, networking and monitoring. This section gauges the empowerment levels of fisherwomen involved in these groups under the two time periods viz., prior to joining the society and the current status. The study identified that more than 300 million rupees has been provided as grant to these groups and these groups had been instrumental in empowering the fisherwomen in Kerala. The study also established the pivotal role SAF plays in achieving the goals of empowering fisherwomen and developing sustainable and commercially viable business models.
Empowerment of Women through Activity Groups of SAF
The activity groups of SAF have now become significant for the rural development of the fisherwomen in Kerala. After the natural calamity –Tsunami, the vision of SAF through these activity groups have become one of the alternative livelihood for the fisherwomen. By analyzing the data, it is clearly understood that the number of activity groups and the fisherwomen involved are increasing day by day. In spite of their annual income they are mainly involved in these groups to meet their daily needs and activities. These activity groups are mainly meant to promote rural development by helping women living in villages achieve economic empowerment. Activity groups are a small, economically homogenous affinity groups of rural poor, voluntarily formed to save and contribute to a common fund to be lent to its members as per group decision and for working together for social and economic uplift of their families and their communities. They encourage women to develop the „saving‟ habit. In recent times, these self-help groups are emerging as an alternative mechanism to meet the urgent needs through later adjustment of their own saving in a regulated manner.
Fisherwomen are victims of socio-economic factors. Poverty is the main obstacle for the improvement of the fisherwomen. Rapid progress in these SHG formations has now turned into an empowerment movement among fisherwomen across various coastal districts of Kerala. Economic empowerment results in women‟s ability to influence or make decision, increase self-confidence, better status and role in household etc. The formation of SHGs is not merely a micro credit project but an empowerment process. The empowerment of women through SHGs would give benefit not only to the individual women but also for the family and community as a whole through collective action for development. Participation of women in the development process through Self-help groups approach brings about desired changes in the quality of individual life and also social cohesion in the society. The present section analyze the empowerment status of fisherwomen involved in the SAF
Theeramythri groups with a view to analyze the role of SAF in empowering fisherwomen in income generation and livelihood option in Kerala and to estimate directly the economic empowerment of fisherwomen and indirectly the socio-political empowerment attained through various micro enterprises of SAF in Kerala. The session also portrays the demographic and employment profile of the rural self-employed women, measure the socio- economic empowerment of fisherwomen involved in activity groups and assesses the major driving forces which lead to the women empowerment. The study also establishes the pivotal role SAF plays in achieving the goals of empowering fisherwomen and developing sustainable and commercially viable business models.
Data and Methodology
The study includes all the beneficiaries of the activity groups of SAF of all the coastal districts of Kerala. The researcher has taken 400 women entrepreneurs engaged in activity groups of SAF like garments & textiles, food, provisional store, supermarket, coir unit and others (hire service, DTP, ornamental making) etc., using non-random convenience sampling technique. The data relating to socio-demographic and entrepreneurial profiles of women entrepreneurs was collected using interview schedule. Secondary data were also collected from related publications and websites. To analyze the data collected, statistical tools like percentage analysis, wilcoxon test, principal component analysis, factor analysis and sequential equation modeling were employed. The figure 7.1 and 7.2 indicates the total number of respondents and the percentage number of activity groups involved in the study respectively.
Fig: 7.1 Number of respondents selected from the coastal districts of Kerala
30 30
60
60 62
30
120 KOLLAM
ALAPPUZHA ERNAKULAM THRISSUR KASARGODE MALAPPURAM TRIVANDRUM
Fig: 7.2 Percentage numbers of activity groups selected from the coastal districts of Kerala The session initiates with the following hypotheses:
H0: There is no significant relationship between the five levels of empowerment of the respondents before and after engaging in activity groups.
H1: There is significant relationship between the five levels of empowerment of the respondents before and after engaging in activity groups.
Period of data collection: October 2015- December 2015 Results and Discussions
The results based on the data are given under the following heads:- i) Socio-Economic Profile
The demographic profile of the respondents are very significant in the study and the results of analysis revealed that majority of 45.5 per cent of respondents belonged to the age selection of activity group members. Table 1 shows the demographic profile of the women entrepreneurs selected for the study.
Table 7.1 Socio-economic profile of the respondents Age –Wise Classification of Respondents
Figures in parenthesis indicate percentage to total 51.02
(ii) Business Profile
Self-employment through these activity groups provides a plenty of opportunities for earning money independently. It is the individual pursuit of capitalism. The business profile of the respondents surveyed indicates that out of 400 respondents, 50 per cent of the respondents are involved in Garments & Textiles, followed by 25.75 per cent in food sector and 12.50 per cent are involved in other activities such as beauty parlour, hiring services etc. Only 7.35 per cent of women entrepreneurs have business experience before embarking on the business and a vast majority of 92.65 per cent of them are fresher‟s to these SHG‟s. Figure 7.3 represents the business profile of the respondents in detail.
Fig: 7.3 Business profile of the respondents
(iii) Assessing Empowerment (Ex-ante and Ex-post activity group involvement) The empowerment of women is crucial for the development of the nation. Bringing women into the main stream of development is major concern for the Government of India. That is why the year 2001 has been declared as the “Year of women Empowerment”. The role of women in economic development is most intimately related to the goal of comprehensive socio economic development and is a strategic question for the development of all societies. Any development strategy which neglects the need for enhancing the role of women cannot lead to comprehensive socio economic development. Thus empowerment is a process of awareness and capacity building leading to greater participation, greater decision making power and control and transformative action. The empowerment of women covers both an individual and collective transformation. It strengthens their innate ability through acquiring knowledge, power and experience.
The Society for Assistance to fisher women has special components for women in its programmes and funds are “women component” to ensure flow of adequate resources for the same. As already mentioned the major schemes implemented by the SAF are through the Theeramythri programme. All the Tsunami relief programmes were merged under this Theeramythri programme and now, it has become one of the greatest reasons for the empowerment of the fisherwomen youth. Almost all the unemployed fisherwomen are brought under this programme and several capacity building programmes, skill training, etc., are given in order to increase and encourage the empowerment status of the