Contribution of the Women’s Cooperative Societies for Living Standards of Rural Family Life
Jayawardena, A.M.A. and Rathnasiri R.A
ABSTRACT
Poverty has become a global women’s issue, as majority of the world’s poor are women due to various reasons. In Sri Lanka, poverty number refers to the percentage of individuals whose household per capita consumption below the official poverty line. Sri Lanka has among the lowest extreme poverty rates among countries in the region. The past studies exhibits the contribution of Micro Finance Institutions, Samurdhi Program and other government programs as means of poverty alleviation but, there are no research on the Women’s Co- operative Societies and their role in rural community . In the present study, the researcher is focusing on to capture the contribution of Women’s Cooperative Society on uplifting living standards of rural families of Sri Lanka. The purpose of the study is to identify the impact of Women’s Co-operative Society on standard of living of rural community of Sri Lanka. Hence, it is identified four independent variables namely, loan size available to members, size of savings kept at the society, number of dependents of the family and years of membership with the society to measure the impact of Women’s Cooperative Society and one dependent variable namely, average monthly expenditure of the family to measure the living standards of rural family life. The results of correlation analysis revealed that the correlation between all four variables and living standards of rural families were significant and the results of multiple regression analysis revealed that the loan size available to members and number dependents are only significant in determining the relationship between living standards of rural families and the women’s cooperative society. These findings can be helpful for policy makers in the field of cooperative societies in designing their services further in the future.
KEYWORDS: Women, Cooperative Society, Living Standards