Role of Microfinance Institutions in Women Empowerment

The present study titled “Role of Microfinance Institutions in Women Empowerment” was conducted in Punjab state of India with the objective to study the role played by microfinance institutions in empowering women. The study was conducted with the scientific approach i.e deductive approach & inductive approach and the study found that the availability of basic services to the members was considerably to a satisfactory extent, but there is still a broad scope of further increasing the availability and access to the basic services. There was the strong opinion of members that savings were made for agriculture and food security but there was a very weak opinion in favor of that savings which were made for social security, education, medical, social ceremonies, emergencies assets building and income generating activities. This revealed that the SHGs have yet fulfilled the basic need of food through farming only and SHGs have to go a long way to fulfill the social needs also. The study concluded that awareness of the members about different processes and activities was considerably to a satisfactory extent, but there is still a broad scope of further increasing the awareness of members.