Are women with more of 'social capital' more empowered? A cross-sectional analysis from rural Wardha, Central India.

Abstract

Despite international commitment and government policies and programmes, a vast majority of women of rural India are socially and economically deprived in the patriarchal sociocultural framework. Strategies to improve women empowerment need context-specific field-based evidence. This study was undertaken to address the research question: "Are women with a higher level of social capital more empowered than their counterparts?" A community-based cross-sectional analytical study was carried out in the Wardha district of Maharashtra, where a two-stage cluster random sampling technique was used to select the 300 study subjects. The outcome variable, women empowerment was assessed using four domains: mobility, inter-spouse communication, household decision-making and asset ownership. The independent variables included social capital along with potential sociodemographic confounders. Multivariate linear regression was applied using the backward stepwise method. The participants had better women empowerment percentage score in the "Household decision-making" domain compared to the other domains. The women empowerment score was found to be significantly higher in the participants with increasing age, higher education, those involved in business/service, above poverty line (ABL), nuclear family, married, and those having at least one living child. In the adjusted analysis, the social capital was found to be a significant determinant of women empowerment, along with age, education, religion, marital status and family type. The improvement of social capital in the form of community-based development projects through Self-Help Groups (SHG) and microfinance programmes need to be encouraged by the Government and NGOs, as this strategy has the potential to improve women empowerment through community-driven development.