A Study of Issues related to Empowerment of Female-Headed Households in Rural Areas in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Women empowerment enables women to identify their latent potentials and skills in decision making, active participation and implementation of policies and programmes. According to that, main feature of empowerment process is having power to control materials, wealth, intellectual initiatives and ideologies and this process has related to welfare, uplifement, community participation and poverty alleviation (Batiwala, 1995). Female-Headed Households (FHHs) is a new structural form of household and this type of households have become significant phenomenon in the last half of 20th and 21st century (Baros, Fox & Mendonca, 1994). “Female Headed Households are households where either no adult males are present, owing to divorce, separation, migration, non-marriage or widowhood, or where men, although present, do not contribute to the household income, because of illness or disability, old age, alcoholism or similar incapacity” (ABC of women workers’ rights and gender equality, 2007:81). Recently, it can be identified a marked increase of Female-Headed Households (FHHs) in Sri Lanka. According to the most recent Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) 2016, out of 5.4 million households in Sri Lanka, 1.4 million households or 25.8 percent of the households were female headed (Household Income and Expenditure Survey Final Report, 2016). Although FHHs have occupied a prominent place in development discourse globally, very limited researches have been conducted regarding women empowerment related to FHHs in Sri Lanka. As a result, there are some knowledge gaps in policymaking and development discourse regarding FHHs.