The desert women are conservative, observe purdah, are illiterate, and shy of coming out as equal partners in development activities. Their activities are limited to collecting fire wood and fodder, fetching drinking water, doing domestic work and taking part in farm activities. Most women, during drought years work as labourers on government run famine relief works in addition to their household duties. The drought brings drudgery to women. The poorer the family, the more it depends for its survival on the earnings of its female members. The women have multiple and often disproportionate responsibilities but they have little ownership or control over resources such as land and property, education, technical skills and market information. This places women in a subordinate and powerless position relative to men.
The society should address the constraints which prevent women from participating as equals. To ensure that women’s needs and interests receive equal attention in a development initiatives, their direct participation in decision making is a prerequisite. The women should be made conscious of women issues, women interests and women rights. Involvement of women in project design, implementation and evaluation should be ensured. They should have access to technical education and training, credit extension information, material inputs marketing and funding. Group formation is a dynamic process and the like minded women should be motivated and encouraged to form credit groups. Equitable and sustainable resource management demands equal participation of women, not just as beneficiaries of water, fire woods and fodder but as managers of natural resources and parties in development process. To obtain sustainability in development process women participation is essential.

The Trust has accorded a high priority to women empowerment. Since inception of the project a lot has been done and a lot needs to be done. As a result of numerous group discussions, capacity building workshops, training programmes and exposure visits a beginning has been made to organize them in self help groups. They have been motivated to take part in stitching, jardozi, soap and detergent making, vaseline and candle making, operating trade shops like domestic flour mills etc. 26 women self help groups have been formed. Dairy activity has worked as a catalyst to women’s organization. It is heartening to note that all these SHGs are working satisfactorily and they have taken bank loans to augment their activities. The Trust has created awareness amongst women regarding education, health and hygiene. Women are now willing to educate their daughters as they do not want to see them suffer the same deprivations. Mother now do not forget to collect the vaccination chart for their newly borns from the village nurse. The change has begun, but lot more has to happen.