Empowerment of women in India: a multi-criteria decision making approach

Women empowerment calls for creating a political, economic and social environment which enables their equal access to control over the means that are critical for leading socio-economical productive and healthy lives. This study investigates the important parameters responsible for women empowerment. The research utilises a new research methodology multi-criteria futuristic fuzzy decision hierarchy methodology which combines fuzzy logic and analytical hierarchy process (AHP) due to the multiplicity of criteria. Women from different ethnic, religion and residential backgrounds were surveyed. The problem considers six dimensions and three categories for each dimension. It was found that for household category, the parameters psychological and social-culture; for community category, the parameters economic and social-culture; and for broader arena, the parameters social-culture and legal were treated important.