The purpose of this dissertation is to establish the extent to which women's membership in self-help groups and their involvement in various activities of these groups, with particular reference to Micro Credit programs, impacted their socio-economic empowerment. The objective is to study the socio-economic empowerment impact factors (evidences) in women members of micro-credit self-help groups in rural India upon the self, the family and the community. / Data selected for analyses was based on an operational model of empowerment that encompassed indicators of purported empowerment at the personal, family and community levels. The working hypotheses in quantitative analyses are that there are significant differences in income, savings, assets, expenditure, basic amenities, as well as attitudinal and behavioral changes in the rural women before and after their group membership. / The qualitative interviews helped to assess the life conditions of the women as the process of empowerment before and after their participation in self-help group micro-credit program. The qualitative interviews were to corroborate the veracity of reported progress from the survey to shed some light on the specific factors that contributed to their empowerment in line with their present quality of life at personal, family and community levels. Hence, the impact of the program is measured as the difference in the magnitude of a given parameter between the pre-and post-SHG situations by comparing the life condition of members before joining the self-help group to their condition three years after joining.

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