Participation of Rural Women in Rice Farming Activities: Case of a Village in Bangladesh

The objectives of this research were to evaluate the socio-economic features of rural women, determine their participation extent in rice farming activities, and find out relationship between socio-economic features and extent of participation. This survey-based research was conducted in a village called Jahidpur in the Sunamganj district. 80 farm families involved in rice farming were selected by using simple random sampling method. Data were collected from women respondents through direct interviews using questionnaires. To determine participation extent, a rating scale of 5 points was used. Around 22 tasks were categorized into 5 aspects namely pre-planting, planting, intercultural operation, harvesting, and post-harvesting. The report revealed that rural women's participation was maximum in post-harvesting activities. However, no participation was found in some field-level tasks such as seedbed preparation, transplanting, nutrient management, plant protection management, irrigation, and harvesting. A major part of the rural women had medium level participation in rice farming activities 61.25% compared to a low participation rate of 38.75% but nobody had high level participation. Some socio-economic characteristics such as age, farming experience, agricultural knowledge had a significant positive relationship whereas education had a significant negative relationship with rural women's participation in rice farming activities. Tradition (100%), food security (95%), and poverty reduction (92.5%) were the main three reasons for women’s participation while male-dominated society (100%), restricted social interaction (95%), and limited access to resources (86.5%) acted as top three barriers. Rural women's involvement in rice farming was not at a satisfactory level and proper strategy implementation is required for further increasing the participation extent in rice farming activities.