Participation of rural women self-help group members in economic and social developmental activities in Theni district, Tamil Nadu

Self-help groups (SHGs) play an important role to achieve women empowerment and their decision making and is a tool of converting the economic empowerment into social and political one. The present study was undertaken to find out the participation of rural women SHG members in economic and social developmental activities of Theni district, Tamil Nadu. It was found that the majority of the respondents had regular participation in deciding about loan lending to members (average 2.22) followed by fixing interest rate for purpose oriented loans (average 2.11), helping to get resources from supporting institutions (average 2.03) and running the commercial venture (average 1.95) in economic developmental activities. Under social developmental activities most of the rural women participated in the village developmental works (average 1.76) such as awareness campaign, road maintenance, rain water harvesting, tree planting and maintaining cleanliness in the temples during festivals and functions followed by social action programmes (average 1.50).