Getting out of Poverty: An Analysis of Gendered Norms and Practices within Poverty and Their Impact on the Self-Perceptions and Agency of Women in Self-Help Groups in Mumbai

Abstract: This study aims to add new knowledge to our understanding of poverty as a multidimensional phenomenon and focuses on the links between poverty and gender norms and practices. The overall research question that this study is concerned with is about the effect of self-help group participation on women’s self-perceptions of options, their access to social, economic and cultural capital, and subsequently, the women’s abilities to make strategic life choices that has the potential to move then out of poverty by challenging the gendered structures in which they live. The study was conducted using qualitative interviews with nine women who were active in self-help groups in a resettled slum-community in Mumbai, India during eight weeks of fieldwork in Mumbai in January – March 2012. The main conclusions of the study are that gender norms and practices such as the role of being a mother or wife, structured the women’s lives in ways that restricted their empowerment. Another major conclusion was that economic capital such as employment was difficult for the women to obtain without first increasing their cultural and social capital in the form of skills, confidence and social networks.