Empowerment of Women Through Dairy Cooperatives

Women’s empowerment is one of the challenging tasks in the present scenario. Majority of women in India both in rural and urban are employed in order to meet the financial demands for survival. Moreover we find women are reported as marginal workers than men in many areas of work. In this phenomenon the cooperatives are playing a vital role in providing the employment opportunities as well. Specific activities focus on enhancing women’s leadership skills, promoting thrift and credit groups as well as health, education and economic activities that contribute to women’s empowerment.

The dairy cooperatives like Visakha dairy in Visakhapatnam, one of the biggest milk and milk products supplier in some of the North Coastal districts and East Godavari district has developed many women dairy projects for empowering women with the aid of government. Recognizing the need to involve more women into dairying for dairy development of cooperative lines, federation proposed to the government of India for financing women dairy project. The government of India sanctioned the project for 3 districts of the state viz., Rayalaseema, Telangana and coastal to organize 580 women dairy cooperative with 25,760 women members during the project period of 3 years starting implementation from 1997-98 onwards and is being continued till today. The present paper emphasizes the status of women in the dairy cooperatives. Keywords: Empowerment, Cooperatives, Visakha Dairy.