Towards Women's Empowerment and Poverty Reduction: Lessons from the Participatory Impact Assessment of South Asian Poverty Alleviation programme in Andhra Pradesh, India
This paper analyzes the impact of South Asia Poverty Alleviation Programme (SAPAP) pilot project on the empowerment of women and poverty reduction, in three districts of Andhra Pradesh (AP), India. The paper attempts to derive implications from the SAPAP project in three broad areas:
- Strengthening the institutional learning from SAPAP;
- Identifying potential and limitations of micro credit for empowerment of women and poverty reduction;
- Developing strategies that are required to overcome poverty.
This comprehensive study uses the following broad criteria for assessing and understanding the impact of the program:
- Generic and gender specific dimensions of poverty;
- Generic and gender specific cause of poverty;
- Power of individual women to exercise control over their own lives.
The study breaks the criteria into multiple variables and quantitatively enumerates the impact of SAPAP by comparing the status of individuals covered under the project and those not covered under the project.
The paper states that SAPAP was successful since condition of members with respect to each indicator was found to be much better than that of the non-members. The paper concludes by recommending:
- Combining social mobilization, capital formation and capacity building;
- Creating participatory, pro-poor and gender sensitive institutional structures;
- Developing inclusive gender equity strategies and sensitizing men on gender issues;
- Following process oriented approach to planning and implementation.
