Impacts Of Rural To Urban Migration On Women's Socio-economic Empowerment

In developing countries like Pakistan mostly women are restricted to domestic activities like doing household work and raising children.The low level of women empowerment in Pakistan is due to hurdles in social values,cultural norms,traditions and ethnic conflicts.The position of women is different in rural and urban society.The rural to urban migration plays role as empowerment actor for social and economic empowerment of women.This study aimed to measure the impacts of rural to urban migration on social and economic empowerment of women in second most urbanized city of Sindh province:Hyderabad in Pakistan.This study has filled the gap of previous studies where migrant women were not focused to measure their social and economic empowerment.This study has focused to measure the social and economic empowerment indicators of four groups of women including migrated,migrating,urban and rural women.The social empowerment indicators of this study include level of education,useful skills gained by women,access to quality health care,better quality of home and social life,decision making power at personal and family matters,reproductive health decisions,freedom of movement and social network.While economic empowerment indicators of this study include formal job engagement,level of income,type of work engaged better quality employment,financial decision making power,consumption of earning,level of property ownership and type of property ownership.In this study,400 samples were collected from targeted area including 100 migrated women,100 migrating women,100 native rural women and 100 native urban women through using 5 Points Likert Scale.This study has applied various analytical techniques for data analysis which include descriptive analysis,independent samples t-Test and liner regression model.The descriptive results of this study has found that the level of social empowerment is higher in migrated and migrating women groups as compare to rural women group,the similar level of empowerment is found in urban women group.The descriptive results of economic empowerment has also found higher level of economic empowerment in migrated women and migrating women groups as compare to rural women group,the urban women group is also found more empowered economically as compare to rural women.The significant results of independent samples t-Test has been found for the independent groups migrated rural and migrated migrating.The linear regressions results of social empowerment have discovered the significance of model with values R~2=0.802,F=175.528,P?0.000,the liner regression results of economic empowerment of women have found the significance of model at R~2=0.260,F=15.245,P?0.000 and similarly the linear regression results of the social-economic empowerment has also discovered the significance of the model with values R~2=0.651,F=80.709,P?0.000.As per the findings,this study suggests that there is need of policy measures and services delivery by concerned government and private institutions for the women empowerment.The study suggests for improved facilities,infrastructure and policies for strong economic generation sources at rural areas.While the study also suggests government and private institutions for promoting gender equality and provide equal economic opportunities.The overall findings of the study can widely support the policymakers,government institutions,private organizations and social workers for policy making process or services delivery.