EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN THROUGH PARTICIPATION IN UTTARA EPZ IN NILPHAMARI DISTRICT

Abstract

The study aimed to assess the extent of empowerment of women through participation in Uttara EPZ, it also determine and describe the selected characteristics of women and to explore the relationships between selected characteristics of the women and their empowerment through participation in Uttara EPZ. Data were collected from 99 respondents out of total 990 women worked in Uttara EPZ by using simple random sampling method from 25 September to 27 October, 2017 through face-to-face interview. The selected 8 characteristics of the women such as age, education, family size, farm size, annual income, knowledge on family management, extension media contact and attitude towards EPZ were considered as the causal factors where empowerment of women constituted the focus issue. Empowerment of women was measured by 4 point rating scale using three dimensions of empowerment. Findings on dimension wise empowerment of women indicated that incase of family decision highest proportion (94.9 percent) of the respondents belongs to high family decisions category, the highest proportion (83.8 percent) of the respondents fell under medium social activities category in case of social activities and in case of mobility the highest proportion (90.9 percent) of the respondents fell under medium mobility category. Rank order shows that ‘Child health care’ under family decisions with family decision index value of 287 was found the first ranked decision taken by women, ‘Casting votes’ under social activities participate by the women with Social Activities Index value of 288 obtained the first ranked social activities participate by the women and ‘Neighbors houses’ under location/places moved by the women in different extent with Mobility Index Value of 280 obtained the first ranked location/places moved by the women. The overall empowerment of women indicated that slightly more than fifty percent (50.5 percent) respondents belonged to medium status of empowerment while near about fifty percent (48.5 percent) under high empowerment category and only 1.0 percent had low empowerment. Based on the computed correlation coefficients (r) among the eight selected characteristics of the women, four of them namely education, annual income, knowledge on family management and attitude towards EPZ showed significant and positive relationship with the empowerment of women. The rest of the characteristics of the women viz. age, family size, farm size and extension media contact did not show any significant relationship with empowerment of women.