Social Marketing and Women Empowerment: Impact of Social Welfare Programs on Women Empowerment and Economic Wellbeing

Abstract

Women empowerment is crucial for a society to have a knowledge-based society wherein the personal growth of women will decisively contribute to individual families, thereby contributing to the society and the country as a whole. Social Marketing is a rising trend and a powerful channel for discussing women's empowerment. This study attempts to examine the impact of the Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) on women's empowerment in Pakistan. BISP is one of the rigorous social welfare programs initiated by the government of Pakistan. The program was initiated to empower economically deprived women. It provides social security, improves living standards, and reduces poverty. To gather the data, a sample of 300 respondents was utilized from Khairpur, Pakistan. The study carried out quantitative techniques to measure the impact of BISP on women's empowerment, thus, for this, regression analysis was conducted, and the association between the variables was explained through Pearson correlation. Furthermore, the questionnaire was designed and distributed among BISP beneficiaries to understand its effect. Hypotheses were tested and validated through statistical analysis.  The findings of the study recommend that there is a positive and significant impact of BISP on women's empowerment and it has a strong correlation with women's empowerment. In this study, the prediction of living standards through this program contributed 35%, poverty alleviation strategy 29% and social security contributed 24%. In this regard, it is ensured that the government of Pakistan may take more similarly effective initiatives to empower not only women but without gender discrimination to empower communities at large.