Development of an Index to Measure Women Empowerment through Dairy Cooperatives

This study assessed the empowerment of dairy women by developing an index by adopting a systematic procedure; seven dimensions under women empowerment were selected namely social, economic, psychological, cultural, political, legal and technological empowerment. The Normalised Rank Order Method was used for determining the scale values. These dimensions were ranked according to judges’ perceived significance and proportions were calculated accordingly while determining the values for each, by Guilford table. To measure the empowerment, 71 indicators under each dimension were selected, due care was taken to include all relevant items. Out of 71 indicators under selected dimensions, 61 were retained for item analysis. Based on the rating of 30 judges, mean relevancy and overall mean relevancy scores were calculated. The statements having relevancy weightage (RW) > 0.70 and Mean Relevancy Score (MRS) greater than the Grand Mean Relevancy Score i.e., 1.39 were considered for inclusion in Dairy Women Empowerment Index (DWEI) and finally 51 indicators were included.