Women Empowerment and Poverty Reduction in Rural Okara, Punjab Pakistan ^†

In Pakistan, women have limited access to credit, property, education, skill, paid job and land. There are many hindrances in women empowerment in rural such as socio-economic and cultural values, norms, patriarchal structure of society. 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 Okara, Pakistan. Multistage random sampling technique was used for data collection at different stages. Okara was selected through simple random sampling technique and four union councils and then eight villages were selected randomly. Twenty-five from each village were selected through convenient sampling thereby making total sample size of 200 women. Most important finding of the study 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 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 years’ education. 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. 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 authority