Factor Analysis towards Women Empowerment through Participation in Income-Generating Activities (IGAs) in the North-West Part of Bangladesh

Empowerment is a process of awareness and capacity building leading to greater decision-making power and control and to transformative action. Women's empowerment is not only about their economic betterment and reduction in dependency but also about gaining greater control over lives and claiming the rights and entitlement for them. Hence, a study was undertaken with the objective to find out the contribution of factors towards the women empowerment by participating in different income-generating activities. The study was carried out in the Bogra District, which is located in the north-west part of Bangladesh. Four hundred thirty-seven women who are the beneficiaries of Gram Unnayan Karma (GUK) were selected for data collection from seven unions under the Upazila, namely, Sariakandi and Gabtoli from this district. A pre-tested interview schedule was used to collect the data from the respondents from December 2014 to April 2015. Out of four dimensions in relation to women empowerment, economic access of the women is the highest in position with lower access into political dimension. Data indicated that the majority of the respondents (64.76%) were in the medium empowerment category, whereas 18.76% and 16.48% of them were in the low and high empowerment categories, respectively. The Pearson correlation test depicted that out of 20 variables, 11 had significant positive and one had negative relationship with the empowerment. Result of stepwise multiple regression analysis revealed that eight variables, namely, knowledge (KNG), attitude towards GUK (ATG), cosmopoliteness (COS), fatalism (FAT), duration with GUK (DWG), income (INC), education (ED) and training (TR) contributed significantly, which as a combination explained 68.56% of the total variation to women empowerment. Path analysis indicated that these eight variables had both direct and indirect effects on empowerment. Beneficiaries of GUK women who had more KNG, had positive attitude towards the GUK/NGOs, were more cosmopolite, educated, had training (TR) experiences, had high income and were for a long time with NGO were found to be highly empowered in the society.