Abstract :
Life is but balance. It has balance between matter and matter, matter and
spirit and that between spirit and spirit that defines life in the most
beautiful sense. The present work is intended to identify strengths and
deficits in urban and rural women of Odisha in the context of women
empowerment and political harmony.
The present investigation primarily concerns psychological empowerment
which is operationalized in terms of self-efficacy belief system. Selfefficacy refers to the extent of belief that the individual can competently
execute a program of action. Similarly the project is also based on a
fundamental assumption that the characteristic pattern of
transformational leader (involving sensitivity to environment, vision and
articulation, risk-taking and unusual strategy) is instrumental in
augmenting political harmony-a condition of equilibrium involving political
parameters.
At an empirical level, two hundred adults (100 males and 100 females)
participated in the study. Half of them were sampled from urban setting
and the other half were from rural setting of Odisha. They were
individually administered three sets of psychometric measures. The
measure of empowerment involved scales of generalized self-efficacy and
political efficacy. The measure of decision-making profiles included
dimensions of sensing, intuitive, thinking and feeling mode of decision
making. The measure of political harmony included dimensions of vision
and articulation, sensitivity to environment, personal risk and unusualness
of strategy.
On the basis of application of appropriate statistical analyses, it was
possible to test three major hypotheses. The first hypothesis states that
women display lower self-efficacy (psychological empowerment) than
men. The second hypothesis states that women demonstrate lower
leadership potential than men.
Keyword :
Empowerment, Self-efficacy, Leadership potential, Decision making, Political harmony.