ABSTRACT
Due to lack of education, low community involvement, exposure to cell phones and mobile applications, age differences, and differences in ability, women in our society always got less privilege and exposure to the outer world and got the least chance to be financially independent. To address this issue, several women's support groups have been formed around the world to give women opportunities to engage in various livelihood activities. Self-help groups (SHGs) are such kind of support groups that typically exist in India and consist of about 15–30 women in a group. These groups were formed to empower women and make them more independent through small businesses. In recent years, women's empowerment has been recognized as an important factor in determining women's status. The purpose of the analysis was to replicate the use of advanced technology like Internet of Things (IoT) and how that helped woman's SHGs to overcome the challenges they faced before. Especially to bring positive changes in SHG's social and economic provisions, the impact of SHG on the individual's social status and differentiated attitudes, the improved accessibility to the facilities available for banking, medical, transportation, etc. have been assessed. This also shows a synopsis of how the livelihood and the effectiveness of the SHGs have changed during the period using the IoT. The chapter focuses on progressive strategies and women's empowerment through SHG leveraging technological advances using the Internet of Things, commonly known as IoT. This chapter also describes one of the proposed blueprints for IoT-based solutions to empower women based in India. Rural and cluster-based organizations have already started working with this model, especially for the social and economic welfare of rural communities and social and economic welfare events for empowering such local community-based organizations. However, existing solutions lack perceived utility and ease of use. This is why a human-centric IoT solution needed to be developed and implemented to bring out effectiveness among the group members of the SHGs. This chapter also explores the most important design scale integrated for the prosperity of this innovation and the various capabilities needed to create effective solutions for improving communication, outreach, and empowerment of women's support groups based on datasets and user cases of Bhubaneswar, India.
