The Impact of Women Empowerment Programs on Upcountry Tea Estate Women in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The term ‘women empowerment’ is a popular concept in the development discourse. However the empirical data regarding empowerment is not much available. Therefore, this study has focused on assessing the impact of women’s empowerment programs which were implemented in the estate sector by the government as well as by NGOs in Sri Lanka. Basically, the study has focused on two main empowerment programs called Plantation Development Program (PDP) and Plantation Community Empowerment Project (PCEP) by the Government and the Care International as well. Most of the development plans do not assess the effect of empowerment programs that can be implemented within communities. Therefore, the objective of this study was to examine the ongoing approaches and the strategies related to empowerment of women.