The main purpose of this study is to construct a women’s empowerment index for handloom weavers by adopting the tools developed by the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI). Within Assam, India, 1000 sample respondents were selected for the study from five leading handloom production districts. For the study, individual-level data were collected by interviewing handloom weavers comprising seven domains and 25 indicators. A regression analysis was used in the study, and the results revealed that out of the five districts in Assam, the empowerment index of handloom weavers is highest for Kamrup (rural) (0.72), followed by Barpeta (0.64), Kokrajhar (0.61), Nagaon (0.58), and Chirang district (0.44). Overall, the women’s empowerment index for handloom weavers is less than the global standard empowerment weighted average of 0.80. It was also found that empowerment is linked to wages, education, availability of electricity, media exposure, and other household characteristics. Therefore, policies should set out a minimum wage structure for weavers that is fixed by the government and implemented properly as well as initiatives regarding other factors that encourage empowerment.

This study analyzed the wage structures and differentials of weavers in the handloom sector taking pooled Ordinary Least Square (OLS) and fixed effect model. Within Assam, India, primary data was collected from Bodoland Territorial Area Districts (BTAD), both rural and urban areas in the years 2018 and 2021. The result estimated by using pooled OLS shows production, productivity, education, experience, training, and distance of weavers from weaving residence to have a positive impact on the wages of weavers. Age, distance of weaving, and location of weaving were found to have a negative impact on wages. However, the result estimated using panel least square (fixed effect) showed age and location of weaving to have a negative impact on wages. The study also chose the better method among pooled OLS and fixed effect model. Since the probability value the Wald test statistic is less than 0.05, the fixed-effect model is preferred to Pooled OLS.