UWF’s approach towards women empowerment covers the following aspects:

• Drudgery reduction
• Gender sensitization
• Capacity building
• Promotion of micro-enterprises
• Socio-economic equality

Indicators of Success: While promoting women empowerment, the participant women and the communities have recognised the success of the programme through two important indicators.  Firstly, the women and their family members considered women’s ability to enhance their family income as an important indicator of success apart from the improvement in hygiene, sanitation, education of children and community health.  At the community level, the ability of the women to take active part in various social development activities was considered to be the most important indicator of success.  In many women empowerment programmes, which did not include promotion of any livelihood activities, women started demanding support for initiating various income generation activities.  It can therefore be concluded that income generation or livelihood support activities should be an integral aspect of the women empowerment programme, while dealing with poor rural communities.