CONTRIBUTION OF BONDING SOCIAL CAPITAL ON WOMEN EMPOWERMENT: AN OVERVIEW FROM BANGLADESH
Social capital has been recognized as an essential towards empowering rural women in the Sylhet District of Bangladesh. This paper examined the contribution played by social capital and participation towards the empowerment of women through IGAs in Bangladesh with a specific focus on rural women in Sylhet District, Bangladesh. The study used questionnaire as its main instrument of quantitative data collection from a total of 328 randomly selected respondents. In the qualitative phase, the in-depth interview method was used for data collection and a total of fifteen (15) informants were purposively selected and interviewed. Bonding social capital (56.6%- high) was found to be the most contributing factor to women empowerment. With regards to the psychological and financial dimensions of empowerment, the results indicate that level of bonding determines financial assets (57.2% -moderate) as well psychological assets (52%- high) among the rural women. The data analysis showed that there is a significant relationship between participation, social capital and women empowerment in the Sylhet District of Bangladesh and this results were also supported by the qualitative analysis of data. The overall results indicated that the conceptualizations of bonding and participation have provided a good understanding of empowerment among women as most of the findings appear to suggest.
Bonding Social Capital, Women, Empowerment