Empowerment of Economically Backward Indian Rural Women

Capacity building through economic enterprises is the first and foremost strategy suggested integrating scheduled caste/economically backward women and youth into "mainstream" society. However, due to inadequate exposure, they are unable to ascertain the enterprises for self employment. An analysis of various researches and studies reveal that scheduled caste women are disadvantaged both socially and economically in the developing countries. It is obvious that villagers cannot adopt industrial approach to any enterprise because of lack of proper knowledge or training and resources. Poultry farming is one such venture that can be successfully undertaken by them as an income generating activity. But their training with media support (Print media, CD-Rom and documentary film) can be an important tool to address development and their empowerment. This book shares our experiences about the training needs assessments of economically backward rural women for various income generating activities, development of media on poultry farming, and the comparative impact on the use of different types of media support for knowledge gain of rural women on poultry farming.