ANNOUNCEMENTS
The study sets out to explore empowerment as a crucial instrument in expanding women’s ability to take ownership of resources and make strategic life choices. While empowerment captures the myriad ways in which intended and unintended changes can enhance the ability of rural women to exercise greater control over their own lives, it does not necessarily lead to their engagement in collective struggles for gender equality. Often empowerment in a feminist discourse has been associated with power and autonomy but the idea of women’s empowerment is constantly subjected to collective solidarity in the public spaces as well as individual assertiveness in the private arenas.
India is one of the largest South-Asian countries with 17% of the global population and its scale has thus, heralded the adoption of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) law, through The Company’s Act, 2013. The underlying ideology behind introducing CSR as ‘people-centred development models’ is to integrate the vision of achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into the core of corporate businesses strategy. CSR initiatives for promoting women empowerment and gender equality, have often proven to redefine norms and institutions towards building women’s control over resources, power and agency.
The proposed study aims to assess the impact of Raman Kant Munjal Foundation's (RKMF)- A CSR Initiative of the HERO Group, rural women livelihood and upliftment initiatives, namely ‘Hamari Asha’ and ‘Skill Development’, in the state of Haryana. In order to examine and interpret, how have the empowerment outcomes of women livelihood and upliftment initiatives entailed a process of change, it becomes necessary to evaluate their ability to exercise choice, a measure of women’s overall well-being outcomes, their access and control to material, human and social resources, ability to define goals and decision making in their everyday lives, etc., at different stages of the interventions.
Keywords: CSR, CSR Expenditure, Women Empowerment, Sustainable Livelihoods
