Measuring the Level of Empowerment of Rural Scheduled Caste Women: A Case Study of Mathabhanga Sub-Division of Koch Bihar District, West Bengal

The empowerment is the multidimensional processes which enable the women to realize their full potentiality and power in all aspect of life. Empowering women and promoting gender equality is a major concern for India. The low status of women in India has been a matter of concern for many decades. Especially the rural society acted as a hindrance for the development of women, which ultimately obstruct the pathway of women empowerment. So the present study has dealt to understand the level of empowerment of the rural scheduled caste women and caste wise variation of the Mathabhanga sub-division of Koch Bihar district. This may help to understand the present status of women empowerment of selected communities and the causes for the variation in the level of empowerment. For measuring the level of empowerment five indicators have been taken into the consideration, these are welfare, access, awareness, participation and control. Based on the indicators, firstly dimension index has been used for the reduction of dimension then the composite score has been calculated and categorized the composite score in four levels (very low, low, moderate and high) to see the level of empowerment based on the mean and standard deviation method. The study show that level of empowerment is low in the study area and it’s varies from caste to caste based on the education and economic condition of the respondents. The women from Dhopa community and Rajbanshi community have high level of empowerment than Namasudra and Jaliakaibartta community in the study area.