Awareness and participation of rural females in women empowerment activities -a cross-sectional study

Background: Women contribute a lot towards society development. Gender equality is essential for society to ensure sustainable development of the country. Better is the status of women more developed are the societies. Status of women can be increased with their empowerment. Objectives of the study: To study awareness and participation of women in women empowerment activities in rural areas of Haryana. Method: Type of Study: Cross-sectional descriptive. Study Settings: Block Lakhan Majra. Study population: Women 18 years and above. Sample and sampling Technique: Stratified sampling technique for selection of study population to represent the all strata of population in equal proportion. Systematic random sampling for interviewing the study subjects. Results: Among1000 study participants 47.8% were house wives. Mobility of females in rural areas is restricted and they are not permitted to move out of house independently. Among the participants 4.7 % women owned land, 6.3% women having their own productive assets like cattle, sewing machines and 11% women having their own cash savings. 16.8% participants were aware toward political involvement of women in political activities and 83.2% were not aware and involved in political activities and they were not allowed to participate in political activities. It has been observed that 9.4% participants exercised voting by their own understanding and 51.2% voted according to desire of male members of the family. Conclusion: It is concluded that awareness among females of rural areas regarding women empowerment is very low. Overall awareness regarding political activities and voting rights is also low and these females are not empowered.