Contribution of Banking Sector in Gender Equity and Women Empowerment through Corporate Social Responsibility in NCR

Abstract

Women Empowerment is one of the effective tools of Gender Equality in any nation. Definitely it is one of the important indicators of socio-economic development. Since the implementation of new Industrial Policy 2013, the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) becomes an obligatory phenomenon for social development. Keeping both these variables in view, almost all the sectors considered women empowerment as an opportunity to fulfil the obligation of CSR. This research paper is an attempt to evaluate the CSR execution by banking sectors as a contribution in Gender Equity and Women Empowerment. Secondary data published by the bank’s annual reports and official portals of banks as well as Government of India were used as data source for this research. Major findings of this research are not very different from the alternative hypotheses. The women empowerment needs for attention trough CSR. Only few banks are separately spending money for this purpose. Few of them are spending their CSR funds in related heads but the banks like HDFC, ICICI, SBI, Canara and Corporate have had addressed the issue of Gender Equity and Women Empowerment and used their significant CSR funds for the same purpose. Although most of the CSR activities are routed indirectly through NGOs but still the contribution is recorded significantly increasing during 2013 to 2018-19. The research strongly suggested that the direct execution from the corporates is required for better results. It has been also suggested that in place of CSR, Social Business model should be adopted as adopted by Bangladesh.