EMPOWERMENT AND EMPLOYMENT GENERATION AMONG ADUGRAMAM BENEFICIARIES OF WAYANAD DISTRICT

Abstract

Adugramam, a goat farming self help group, is governed by Kudumbashree, an organisation established in 1998 to empower women in Kerala. A study was designed to analyse the empowerment of Adugramam beneficiaries of Wayanad district of Kerala. By adopting multi stage random sampling technique 75 beneficiaries were selected and data was collected using the personal interview. The study revealed that majority of the Adugramam beneficiaries studied were middle agedwith secondary level of education, belonged to general category ofHindu religion. It could also be observed that majority of them lived as nuclear families and size of the family was three to four members. Primary occupation was agriculture and secondary occupation was animal husbandry with above ten years of experience. Land owned by majority of beneficiaries was below one acre with average herd size of three to four goats. Analysis of empowerment revealed that majority of beneficiaries had low level ofempowerment and upon evaluation of different dimensions of empowerment it was observed that psychological empowerment was ranked first.

Keywords

• adugramam
• kudumbashree
• empowerment