Determinants of Women’s Empowerment and Poverty Reduction: A Case Study of Rural Faisalabad, Punjab

In the rural areas of Pakistan, women have limited access to credit, property, education, skill, paid job and land. There are many hindrances in women empowerment in the rural areas such as socio-economic and cultural values, norms, and patriarchal structure of society etc. In this context, this research was planned to analyze different determinants of empowerment of rural women for poverty reduction in agrarian communities by taking the case study of rural Faisalabad. Multistage random sampling technique was used for data collection at different stages. Two tehsils from district Faisalabad were selected through simple random sampling technique and four rural union councils and then eight villages were selected randomly. Twenty five (25) from each village were selected through convenient sampling technique thereby making total sample size of 200 women. Most important finding of the study is that the households where women have higher decision making authority are better-off and in other words women empowerment is likely to reduce poverty and increase household wellbeing. The results also revealed significantly positive relationship between women age, education, decision making authority and paid work involvement with empowerment and poverty reduction. It is also concluded that education is the most important factor in empowerment but majority (64.5%) of respondents had only up to 5 year education. In the study area most respondents had very limited decision making authority and control over economic resources mostly significant and important decisions and resources are controlled by the male members. Similarly majority of the respondents (65%) said that decisions regarding family size were taken by both husband and wife. Freedom of mobility is one of the pillars of empowerment and helpful in poverty reduction but the results showed that very small percentage of respondents had full freedom of mobility to go outside the house and more than 80% of the respondents needed permission from their family to go to the local market. Though rural women have great contribution in poverty reduction but majority of them were facing the problems of low education, wages, less control over resources, freedom of mobility and lack of decision making