EMPOWERMENT OF RURAL WOMEN IN VEGETABLE PRODUCTION FOR NUTRITIONAL SECURITY
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Date
2022
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Abstract
Rural women play an important role in both household and socio economic
development of the society. Development of any nation will be impossible without developing
this important and substantial segment of our society. Women perform a perceptible role in a
variety of agricultural operations. They are actively involved in the cultivation of various crops,
as well as vegetable production and kitchen gardening. Realizing the importance of rural women
in vegetable production and knowing the extent of training needs of these rural women, the
study entitled ―Empowerment of rural women in vegetable production for nutritional
security‖ was planned with following objectives: To study the work profile of rural women in
homestead gardening. To assess the existing knowledge and practice of rural women on
vegetable production. To empower rural women in vegetable production through intervention
and assess its impact. The present study was conducted in Jorhat district of Assam state. From
Jorhat sub-division three blocks namely Kaliapani, Dhekorgorah and Chipahikhola were
selected for the study. From each block three villages were selected and from each village 50
respondents were selected by simple random sampling method who were involved in vegetable
production activities. Thus all total four hundred fifty (450) rural women from nine villages
were the respondents for the present study. The study revealed that majority of the rural women
were of middle age group (58.22%), married (91.55%), educated up to middle school level
(31.56%) belonged to OBC/MOBC category (73.77%) had nuclear type of family (80.23 %),
were having farming as their main occupation (38.89%), had agricultural land 1-3 bigha
(38.00%) majority of them had pucca house (48.22%). More than 69 per cent had medium
socio-economic status. All the respondents were using biocompost as their main source of
fertilizer, had poor contact with extension personnel, lack of time due to over burden of
household work was the main problem faced by the respondents in attending training
programme. Majority (63.77%) of the respondents had medium level of participation in
different activities of production of vegetable crops, had medium level of participation in
decision-making (64.22%). Majority (76.00%) of the respondents had medium level of
knowledge about vegetable production. The percentage of respondents belonging to the low
category of knowledge was higher (21.55%) in the area of land preparation in comparison to
other aspects of vegetable production. In case of practice, majority (64.89%) of the respondents
had to moderate level of practice regarding vegetable production and 31.33 percent had poor
level of practice in plant protection. Selection of respondents for the intervention programme
was done from that block where percentage of respondents belonging to lower level of existing
knowledge in vegetable production was found more. After intervention gain in knowledge
score was 29.34. The impact of intervention programme was found to be highly significant (tvalue-
46.56**) in terms of gain in knowledge. Data regarding existing practices and adoption of
practices shows an increase in adoption of practices score (11.57) after 30 days of intervention
programme and there was also a highly significant difference between pre exposure practice
score and post exposure practice score.
Keywords: Empowerment, Rural women, vegetable production, Nutritional Security,
knowledge and practice etc.