PARTICIPATION OF RURAL WOMEN IN BACKYARD DAIRY FARMING AT BOALKHALI UPAZILLA, CHATTOGRAM DISTRICT.

Abstract

A significant part is played by rural women in livestock sector in Bangladesh. There are many studies conducted on women participation in dairy farming in different areas of Bangladesh. But so far, a very few studies have been conducted to know the percentage of rural women engaged in backyard dairying in this study area. Therefore, the present study was undertaken to know the extent of involvement of farm women and other family members in the decision making in relation to feeding, management and health care. It is a multistage sampling by which 40 farm women were taken, keeping in mind some pre-requisite conditions and questionnaires were prepared for easy collection of necessary information in regard to the objective of the study. The information obtained from the field visit showed that mostly housewives (75%) contribute in dairying but most of them (67%) belongs to 20-40 age. Their predominant religion is Islam (70%), (45%) are illiterate,(60%) have 1–2-acre land, (35%) lived in mixed type of houses with a family, (80%) have family member less than 5. From the collected data it was found that the overall contribution of women is somewhat equal to men in dairying on the study area. It was also observed that in decision making, regarding health care (35%) and feeding (25%) women had lower participation, while the participation of men was 45% & 40% respectively. Besides, in case of hygiene maintaining, watering, milking, milk selling, manure disposal land vaccination women had their participation of about 45%, 30%, 45%, 30%, 15% and 30% respectively