Women have fiercely competing men and have excelled in various fields and education proves to be the backbone of women empowerment. Besides facing many personal, family, societal and work place issues yet their achievements gets unrecognized particularly of rural women. This presentation helps in determining the rural mother's awareness and the perceptional factors to significantly understand the importance of education.

1. ROLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN WOMEN EMPOWERMENT:
AN INSIGHT ON THE RURAL MOTHER’S AWARENESS WITH REFERNCE
TO MANMALAI VILLAGE
Ms. LUBNA SURAIYA Ms. THANGALAKSHMI
Full Time Ph. D Research Scholar, Full Time Ph. D Research Scholar,
PG Research Department of Commerce, PG Research Department of Commerce,
Holy Cross College, Tiruchirappalli – 2. Holy Cross College, Tiruchirappalli – 2.

2. INTRODUCTION
Women of this century is par in brilliance with men and beyond and have
confirmed extraordinary in balancing the quality of life at house errands. Women
constitute almost half of the population in the world. But the hegemonic masculine
dogma made them undergo many tribulations denied equal opportunities in different
parts of the world including illiteracy, inequality, dependency, irrationality, superstitious
beliefs and myths. Women education has empowered to construct political rights,
fundamental rights, civil rights, social rights, economic rights and health status. Over the
years, India’s literacy rate has enhanced manifold from 12% in 1947 to 74.4% in 2011.
Even though, the literacy rate is still below the average of 84% around the world. The
concept of women empowerment was introduced at the International Women Conference
at NAROIBI in 1985. The first year of New Millennium 2001 was declared as "WOMEN
EMPOWERMENT YEAR". Education of a women leads to a better family and
ultimately an idyllic society to a progressive nation. The study was carried out with a
sample size of 60 from Manmalai Village. The study reveals that respondents have
realized the necessity to educate women in future.

3. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Besides education has enhanced the sovereignty, yet it is observed that in
many parts of the world, women are facing threats to their lives, health and well- being
due to their lack of supremacy and influence. Women receive less formal education
when compared to men, and at the same time, women's own knowledge, capability and
coping mechanism often go unrecognized. The dealings that obstruct women's fruitful
accomplishments operate at many levels of society, from the most personal to the
highly public. At this juncture, the awareness level of rural mother’s and their
significance towards educational level is very low in Manmalai Village. However a
gradual change is observed as the rural mothers are educating their children from
primary to higher education. Therefore, the researcher has made an effort to study the
awareness level of mothers in Manmalai village towards role of education in women
empowerment module.

4. RESEARCH GAP
Though numerous studies are made available towards the role of education,
women empowerment separately and also supporting articles are based on role of
education in women empowerment. In most cases only conceptual reviews are found.
This empirical study focuses on the mother’s awareness towards role of education in
women empowerment.
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
1. To understand the role of education in women empowerment.
2. To study the awareness level of rural mothers towards women education in Manmalai
village.

5. METHODOLOGY
Descriptive type of research with cross sectional study was carried out. The
population of the study is Manmalai Village of Thiruvannamalai District consisting of
118 families. Simple Random Sampling method was used with a sample size holding
60 families. The research was carried out by using both primary data and secondary data.
The required Primary data was collected from the respondents through Interview Schedule.
The Secondary data were collected from various sources including books, periodicals,
articles, research papers, newspapers, official websites and manuals. The application of
tools used were Percentage Analysis and Garrett Ranking.
Percentage Analysis : Applied to create a contingency table from the frequency
distribution and represent the collected data for better understanding.
Garrett Ranking : Respondents have been asked to assign the rank for all factors and the
outcomes of such ranking have been converted into score value .

6. APPLICATION OF TOOLS
Factors
Assigned Ranks
Total
Score
Mean
Score
Rank
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Societal Change 13 10 7 5 2 8 9 4 4800 80 1
Add on income ( Agriculture) 1 0 13 15 6 8 7 10 4080 68 2
Improvement for next Generation 14 5 6 2 9 7 11 6 3600 60 3
Elevation of Status 6 3 11 6 8 7 7 12 3180 53 4
Gender Equality 5 9 15 4 12 6 5 4 2820 47 5
Overcome Barriers (Know
Bureaucracies,
10 15 2 1 0 20 5 7 2460 41 6
Mentor System 4 4 4 4 12 4 18 10 1815 33 7
Economic Growth (K, PCI) 6 2 12 18 6 3 7 4 1260 21 8
Source : Primary Data
Table 1.1 – Perceptional Ranking of the Respondents

7. FINDINGS
 Based on the milieu of the respondents, 36 respondents (60 percent) of the respondents
are in the age group of 35-46 years.
 30 (50 percent) of the respondents are in majority according to their level of occupation
are engaged in farming.
 The 1st rank is preferred to societal changes by the respondents as they realized that
education will bring a change in tackling issues like domestic violence, giving voice for
women rights and social awakening issues like casteism, classism, regionalism, parochialism
and breaking superstitious beliefs.
 Through education it becomes easy to carry forward the importance of education for
next generation and able to enhance higher level of literacy rate is the 3rd rank opted.

8.  The 4th rank is in regard to upliftment of status denoting various schemes, quotas,
reservations in every aspect particularly for women is observed. There is reduction of
poverty, improved standard of living, self-reliable, independent and gains self-confidence.
 The 5th rank depicts that the respondents have agreed equilibrium and par excellence to
men. This has created a scenario of Gender equality and not Gender Discrimination.
 It is observed that education assists in getting through tough situation in the wisest
manner and enable to overcome personal, family, societal and bureaucratic issues and act as
a change agent through means of education in women empowerment.
 The respondents realized that by educating a girl child in a family will boost up other
families to follow the foot steps and hence it is considered to be a role model.
 The last rank is given for overall economic development by breaking the disequilibrium of
income and wealth, promotion of savings, capital formation and resource utilization

9. SUGGESTIONS
The mindset of Gender Discrimination to Gender Equality has to be explained for rural
mothers.
1. The rural mothers must come out of the paradoxical attitude and myths in order to
revitalize the future of their children so as to avail the optimum benefits.
2. Government must establish many educational institutions particularly in the rural
areas for strengthening the women education. Government should work with parent,
civil-society organizations and educational institutions in constructive ways for
higher system of education.
3. Uniformity in various government schemes has to be mandatorily and strictly be
followed without any crooked practices to engage women in the pedagogic principle
of women upliftment .

10. CONCLUSION
Women empowerment is not limited to urban, working women but women in
remote towns and villages are now increasingly making their voices heard loud and clear
in society. They are no longer willing to play a second fiddle to their male counterparts.
While it is true that women, by and large, do not face discrimination in society today,
unfortunately, many of them face exploitation and harassment which can be of diverse
types: emotional, physical, mental and sexual. They are often subjected to rape, abuse
child labour, sex trafficking, child marriages and other forms of physical and intellectual
violence. Women empowerment, in the truest sense, will be achieved only when there is
attitudinal change in society with regard to women folk, treating them with proper respect,
dignity, fairness and equality.

11. REFERENCES
 http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/3816/7/07_chapter%202.
 https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Women-Empowerment
 https://www.unfpa.org/resources/issue-7-women-empowerment
 https://www.lawctopus.com/academike/empowerment-women-education-sector/
 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1081705.pdf
 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280218999_WOMEN_EMPOWERMENT_
ROLE_OF_EDUCATION.