Women empowerment through backyard poultry farming in Kumaon division of Uttarakhand
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Date
2022-08
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G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, District Udham Singh Nagar, Uttarakhand. PIN - 263145
Abstract
In India, 85 per cent of rural women are actively engaged in agriculture still they have no ownership of land and have remained confined as workers throughout the decades. The rank of India in Global Gender Gap Index (2022) report was 135th out of 146 countries in the world. Thus, there is a need to look for subsidiary sources of income for women without creating any inconvenience for them. Backyard poultry is a viable option as it can be carried out easily in the backyards by women while they continue focusing on their children and household responsibilities. It will empower the women along with alleviating livelihood vulnerability and gender inequality. Women empowerment refers to increasing the social, cultural, psychological, economic and technological strengths of individuals. Therefore, the present study attempted to find out the socio-economic, communication and psychological characteristics, extent of empowerment, relationship between the selected profile characteristics and extent of empowerment and constraints faced by the farm women in backyard poultry farming. The study was conducted in Kumaon division of Uttarakhand. Gadarpur block of Udham Singh Nagar district was selected purposively, three villages were selected randomly from the block. A total of 92 respondents were selected from the villages via purposive method of sampling. Pre-tested interview schedule was used for data collection and descriptive research design was employed to meet the objectives of the study. The findings of the study revealed that majority of the respondents were of middle age (26 to 46 years), almost all were married, had education up to middle school (35.87%) and belonged to general category (60.87%). The findings further revealed that majority (53.84%) were farmers by occupation, had a medium family size (4 to 8 members) and had medium level (69.57%) of social participation. Majority had medium experience in poultry farming. About three-fourth (75%) earned a medium annual family income and medium level (64.13%) of income from backyard poultry farming i.e., BYPF. Majority (86.96%) had a medium flock size, 71.74 per cent had medium marketing behavior, 61.96 per cent had received no training in BYPF, 73.91 per cent had medium information seeking behavior, 67.50 per cent had medium risk preference, 73.91 per cent had medium economic motivation and 59.78 per cent had medium decision-making ability. Most of the respondents had high level of social and cultural empowerment and majority had medium level of psychological, economic and technological empowerment respectively. Overall empowerment was of medium level in majority (55.43%) of the respondents. The findings related to the relationship between selected characteristics and extent of empowerment revealed that age, family size, annual family income, flock size and risk preference had no significant relationship whereas education had negative and significant relationship with extent of empowerment. On the other hand, social participation, poultry farming experience, information seeking behavior, training exposure, economic motivation and decision-making ability had positively significant relationship with extent of empowerment. Majority of the respondents reported attack of predators, lack of necessary training and lack of government support and subsidies as the major constraints.