Adhikary and Dutta

impact of economic empowerment and political empowerment on the incidence

of domestic violence.

Results and discussion

Refer to table-1. We see that almost half of our sample women have their own

assets, but only 21.6% can use their assets. Among the sample women 63% earns

income and 61% contribute in family expenditure. Two third of the sample women

can influence financial decision in their family. However, one third of the sample

women can spend independently. It is remarkable to note that 61% has savings

bank account, and 52% of the respondents have access to formal credit. Actually,

it is a consequence of the SHG movement in rural India.

From Table 2 we find that the value of Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of

Sampling Adequacy is 0.597 (greater than 0.5 is desirable). It indicates that the

sample size in this study is adequate for Principal Component Analysis. The value

of chi-square statistic in Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity is statistically significant. It

confirms that the selected indicators of economic empowerment of women are

inter-correlated. Therefore, here PCA is appropriate methodology for analyzing

the importance of the selected indicators in measuring economic empowerment

of women.

Table 3 presents the detailed results of the PCA which reveal the variance

explained by the components at initial situation, after extraction and after rotation.

The components have been extracted using Kaiser Criteria and rotated imposing

Varimax rotation method. This study has considered three principal components

which have Eigen values greater than one. Rotation Sums of Squared Loadings

indicate that the first rotated principal component explains 24% of total variation

in economic empowerment of women. The second and third rotated principal

components explain 20% and 19% of variance respectively. Three components

altogether account for 63% of total variation in the economic empowerment of

women.

Table 4 depicts that the level of economic empowerment of average women is

low and it varies widely. Average age of women is about 32 years. It ranges from

17 years to 70 years. Most of the women do not complete primary education. On

an average, women are empirically found to complete only two years of formal

education. They have become the members of the SHGs for approximately last

two years only. The mean value of husbands’ education level is 5.3 years. That

means that husband has just completed his primary education. The annual per

capita income in the family is Rs 6186.49. Average land holding per family is 1.49

bigha (1 bigha= 0.04 acre). Therefore, average sample families are poor in terms

of education, income and in terms of holding assets.

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