PARTICIPATION OF RURAL WOMEN IN HOMESTEAD AGRICULTURAL ACTIVITIES IN SADAR UPAZILA OF THAKURGAON DISTRICT

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to determine the extent of participation of rural women in the homestead agricultural activities. The study was conducted on the rural women from two selected unions of Sadar Upazila under Thakurgaon district. Data were collected from randomly selected 97 women by using pre-tested interview schedule during the month of 1st February to 15 March, 2017. The participation of rural women in homestead agricultural activities was considered as focus issue. The focus issue consisted of around 14 activities under three different sub-headings such as homestead vegetable cultivation, homestead fruit cultivation and homestead birds and animal rearing. The nine selected characteristics of the rural women such as age, education, family size, farm size, annual income, organizational participation, cosmopoliteness, knowledge on agriculture, and decision making capacity were considered as the selected characteristics. Participation of women in homestead agricultural activities was measured by 4-point rating scale. It was found that the observed score of participation ranged from 4 to 35 against the possible range 0 to 42. From the findings, it is observed that near about three-fourths (74.2 percent) of women had medium participation in homestead agricultural activities, about 16.5 percent of the rural women had high participation, while only 9.3 percent of them had low participation in homestead agricultural activities. Pearson’s product moment correlation coefficient (r) was used in order to explore the relationships between the selected characteristics of the rural women and focus issue. ‘Cattle rearing’ under rearing homestead birds and animals with participation index (PI) value of 247.4 was found the first ranked participation in homestead agricultural activities whereas ‘Goat rearing’ was the last ranked homestead agricultural activities as opined by the rural women with PI value of 54.5. It was evident from the correlation analysis that, family size, cosmopoliteness, homestead agricultural knowledge and decision making capacity had significant and positive relationship with the extent of participation where educational qualification had significant and negative relationship with the extent of participation on homestead agricultural activities. On the other hand, age, farm size, annual income, organizational participation had no significant relationship with the extent of participation.