Leadership Enhancement of Rural Women.

Abstract

The study aimed at developing a training program for enhancement of women leadership and executing and evaluating its effect. The Enhancement of Women Leadership Program (EWLP) was developed, which consists of five broad dimensions as Nurturing Intelligence, Self Development, Developing Leadership Skills, Social Enterprise and Inculcating Values. The methodology of the program is experiential one and is based on needs of the participants. A tryout was held to tap the effectiveness of EWLP. Two studies were done. In the first study, due to varied reasons, analysis of this data was avoided. In all 58 Indian rural women who enjoyed the leadership were trained in the second study. They were educated and their age ranged from 20 to 62 years. Their SES was lower middle. Personal information schedule, Leadership Trait Questionnaire, Leadership Inventories, Convergent Thinking in Behavioral Units Test and Situational Task were used for pre-test post-test analysis. The effect of EWLP was positive for women, resulting in improvement in leadership as analyzed through situational tasks and the social workers' regular and follow up observations. The analysis of pre-post comparative statistics on paper – pencil tests revealed that though the means are higher on post occasions, they are not significantly different.

Gender and Behaviour Vol. 5 (2) 2007: pp. 1376-1387