EDIAIS :Conference papers

Gender may not be the sole or always the most salient aspect of inequality and disadvantage in people's lives but until recently, it has been an unquestioned, taken for granted aspect of social reality and rarely the subject of social sciences analysis. Any effort towards women's empowerment would need to recognize that women have multiple identities based on gender, class, caste, marital status and age. In the Indian scenario, these issues are more complex because of women's subordinate position within the family due to their inferior socio-economic and political status. In this context, empowerment strategies like micro credit have helped women to renegotiate their positions within and outside their families. However, the assumption that micro credit programmes would automatically lead to women's empowerment and solve their problems, has to be looked into. To understand fully the implication of micro finance and micro enterprise, we would need to examine the impact of women's earnings on intra-household income distribution and decision making and whether it has increased their autonomy and ability to resist coercion or oppression.

Many studies have been conducted in India to assess the impact of micro credit schemes aimed at alleviating poverty and addressing the existing inequalities between men and women. This paper would attempt to review some of the Impact Assessment (IA) tools used in conducting these studies and highlight the gaps in getting a gender perspective. Efforts would be made to measure the gender sensitivity of the questionnaires for gathering information at various stages. The emphasis would be on the content like "Choice" since "Economics is all about how people make choices and Sociology is about how they do not have any choices to make".

The Gender Audit Assessment, thus, would examine the community and household based technique used for the identification of gender differences while assessing the differential impact of micro credit and micro enterprise services on each gender including girl child. Hopefully, it will initiate a process of bringing out the unique aspects of construction of gender perspective in the Indian political and social context.

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