The Swashakt program launched by 3ie, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, helps answer key aspects of this central question. Swashakt supported women’s empowerment collectives (WECs) spanning farm and non-farm sectors in 10 Indian states with the goal of fostering self-sustaining, women-led enterprises that strengthen their economic empowerment and agency. In this blog, we summarize what worked and what did not and what could be done for greater effectiveness.
Takeaways from scaled projects
Through process evaluations for scaled projects, we assessed the implementation models, enablers, and barriers in building viable women-led enterprises and the influence of local socioeconomic contexts. 3ie evaluated the projects implemented by ACCESS Development Services, URMUL Trust and Chitrika Foundation and IDinsight studied a program implemented by IMAGO Global Grassroots and Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA).
- Gaps in transitioning to high-value enterprises: Both farm and non-farm collectives aimed to expand operations and strengthen market linkages. But they faced challenges in securing skilled marketing and business professionals, hindering their ability to create robust business plans, achieve profitability, and effectively scale up.
- Influence of social and gender norms: Across all four projects, pervasive patriarchal norms significantly limited women’s participation. Rigid gender expectations, including around childcare and domestic responsibilities, restricted their mobility, agency, and autonomy. Many women lacked family support, with male members often controlling their ability to attend training sessions or engage in economic activities outside the home.
- Training program barriers and facilitators: Training programs under each project included exposure visits, stipends, and information on government schemes—and were well-received by participants. The challenging issues were course relevance, comprehension, retention, timing, and duration. Training programs often struggled to balance course utility with accessible formats and participants’ schedules.
- Planning for sustainable development: Across the collectives, long-term sustainability planning remained a weakness. Even after four years, they depended on the implementing organizations for raw materials, market connections, and capital, signaling a need for stronger sustainability frameworks.
- Guiding the impact evaluation strategy: Process evaluations were instrumental in refining the approach for impact evaluations. Regular engagement with implementation partners and insights from qualitative assessments helped adapt the evaluation method from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to a quasi-experimental design, which proved more feasible for capturing project impacts.
Valuable lessons from two projects
Evaluations of two standout Swashakt-funded projects—WASSAN’s millet enterprises in Odisha and Chitrika Foundation’s weaving collectives—offer valuable lessons on how women-led businesses can shape both women’s empowerment and the rural economy.
WASSAN’s millet enterprises in Odisha: This project examined action-oriented training and capacity-building efforts focused on millet processing, as well as additional benefits of value-added activities—such as creating millet-based products like biscuits and noodles.
The impact evaluation led by the University of Greenwich showed:
- Groups that received training on both millet processing and value addition experienced growth in startup capital, profits, and empowerment outcomes, including enhanced decision-making and control over income.
- Groups that received only millet processing training saw limited entrepreneurial growth but still benefited in terms of empowerment.
These findings underscore the power of innovation through value-added activities in enhancing women’s entrepreneurial growth.
Chitrika Foundation’s weaving collectives in southern India: Chitrika provided women weavers training across the handloom value chain to strengthen their skills and business opportunities. By collectivizing them in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana from 2021 to 2023 and establishing three collective enterprises, Chitrika addressed sectoral challenges like low earnings, declining participation, and limited institutional support.
3ie’s impact evaluation used household surveys and quasi-experimental methods, and revealed mixed outcomes:
- The project fostered social empowerment, with participants reporting higher self-efficacy, increased knowledge of digital payments, and a stronger belief in women’s right to work outside the home.
- Other positive outcomes included improved mental health and less exposure to domestic violence.
- The project did not significantly improve employment status, income, or savings. The lack of economic impact was attributed primarily to wage declines during the COVID-19 pandemic.
These findings underscore the potential of women’s collectives as platforms for delivering social empowerment interventions. Policy recommendations include creating safety nets for weavers during economic downturns, boosting wages to encourage younger generations to pursue the craft, and designing localized programs that reflect the sector's employment dynamics and economic constraints.
Key to transforming the rural economy
Swashakt highlights the immense potential of women-led collectives to transform rural economies and empower women. While challenges remain, especially around sustainability, training, and cultural barriers, these projects have shown promising results in enhancing both economic opportunities and social empowerment for rural women. Through targeted policy interventions, flexible training programs, and a focus on sustainable, value-added enterprises, women-led collectives can serve as platforms to contribute significantly to women’s empowerment and foster gender equality in India.
You can learn more about the Swashakt on the program webpage.
We are grateful to Dr. Anjini Kochar, Dr. Bidisha Barooah, Neelakshi Mann and Tanvi for providing inputs.
