Gender Differentiated Dimensions in Agriculture and Identifying its Factors Governing Impact on Tribal Farm Women - A Study in Assam
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Date
2022
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Abstract
The present study was carried out in Jorhat, Morigaon, Baksa and
Dhemaji districts of Assam with the objectives to assess the gender division of
agricultural activities and to explore gender differentiated dimensions in agriculture
along with its impact factors. A multistage random sampling method was followed to
select the final respondents of 320 that comprises equal number of women and men
respondents of a particular household. Two agricultural components namely paddy and
piggery were included in the study. Appropriate statistical tools viz. frequency,
percentage, mean, Z- test, multiple regression, path analysis were employed to analyse
the data. The findings revealed that majority of the farm women and men belonged to
young age group with less considerable level of education. More than ninety percent
had male headed household and nuclear family (70.625) with medium sized family
(53.75%) in between 4 to 6 members. Both had good number of years of farming
experience but had low training exposure, poor extension contact and less social
participation. Majority (66.25%) of them were small holding farmers utilizing 1 to 2 ha
of land under paddy (71.25%) and had small pig size of less than 3 number. Most
(58.12%) of them had rice and other allied agricultural activities as the main occupation.
Average annual family income was Rs. 1.72 lakh and individual average income of
women and men was Rs. 0.39 and Rs. 1.33 respectively. Both women and men had a
medium level of knowledge and medium risk bearing ability. A medium overall level of
participation was found in agriculture by women (55.62%) and men (58.12%) with
mean scores of 54.57 and 67.99 in women and men respectively. Majority (40.63%) of
the farm women had low decision making power in agriculture, while men (49.37%)
had a high decision making power. The overall extent of access and control was found
to be medium (48.75%) to low (33.13%) in women whereas, in men, a medium
(47.50%) to high (30.62%) level was found. Most of the women had low (41.87%)
income control (37.50) and forty five percent men had high to medium (29.38) income
Comparatively the workload of women in triple role was more than men as women
spent on an average of 15.75 hr. /day while spend 11.88 hr. /day. Both women (64.38%)
and men (51.88%) had medium level of perception towards agriculture. A two sample
Z- test showed that there were significant differences between women and men in all the
four gender differentiated dimensions of agriculture. Among the seven impact factors,
only education and family were positively significant with the likelihood of resources‟
access control and control pattern in usage of income at 0.001 level of probability. Three
factors viz. personality, family and education were found to be positively significant
with the likelihood of production decision making pattern at 0.001 level of probability.
The coefficient of multiple determination (R2) values (0.619), (0.709), (0.688) stated
that these factors jointly contributed 61.90 percent, 70.90 percent and 68.80 percent
towards variation in production decision, resources‟ access control and control over
usage of income respectively. Path analysis was performed using SPPS Amos version
26.0 to detect direct and indirect effects of the three dependent variables (Resource
access control, Income usage and production decisions) and three independent variables
(Personality, Family and Education). Path models revealed significant direct effects
between Education and Family with all the dependent variables, i.e., Resource access
control, Income usage and production decisions. However, direct effects of individual
decision have been observed only with Production decisions. The co-variances among
and between the independent variables were significant and showed significant indirect
effects.