Achieving Sustainable Development Goal by Empowering Women through Mulberry Silk Production in Karnataka, India

Abstract

Women are considered the weaker section in most societies as compared to men. The existing gender inequality has attracted the world's attention, and 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were set up in 2015. Among 17 SDGs, gender equality is the 5th important goal and is also considered in agriculture. Therefore, the present study aims to assess women's empowerment for achieving gender equality goals through the production and marketing of mulberry silk in the Chikkaballapur district of Karnataka. The primary data was obtained from 90 randomly selected sericulture farmers with the help of a pre-tested well-structured schedule. The data was analyzed, and the women's empowerment index was constructed to determine the empowerment level. In the present study, 0.75 was considered as a threshold level of the empowerment index, meaning if the index value is more than 0.75, then there is adequate empowerment among women. The result of the study indicated that about 22.22 % of women were having Individual Empowerment Index(IEI) of more than 0.75, which opined that women had attained adequate empowerment. The remaining 77.78% of women were confined to the process of attaining empowerment. The overall Women Empowerment Index (WEI) was found to be 0.688 for these women who participated in sericulture. It shows that involvement in the production and marketing of mulberry silk could help in women's empowerment in the study area. Despite 60 per cent employment of women in sericulture, the adequate empowerment index for women has not been achieved. Before the researcher, this is the real challenge of how the women empowerment index may be improved to the desired level.