ROLE OF WOMEN IN DAIRY FARMING AT PATIYA THANA, IN CHITTAGONG DISTRICT

Abstract

Rural women play a significant role in animal husbandry and allied fields in Bangladesh. There are so many studies conducted on women participation in dairying in different areas of Bangladesh. But so far no study has been conducted to know the percentage of rural women engaged in 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 30 farm women were taken having some conditions fulfilled and questionnaires were prepared for easy collection of necessary information.

The information obtained from the field visit showed that mostly housewives (83.3%) contribute in dairyng but most of them (80%) are belongs to 20-40age. Their predominant religion is Islam (80%). Most of them were primarily educated (40%), having 1-2 acre land (56.6%), lived in mixed type of houses (26.6%) with a family having family member less than 5 (73.33%).

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 (32.49%) and feeding (24.61%) women had lower participation, while the participation of men were 39.99% & 45.89% respectively, but women participation has improved than earlier. Besides, in case of hygiene maintaining, watering, milking, milk selling, manure disposal and vaccination women had their participation of about 46.66%, 30%, 43.33%, 16.66%, 16.66% and 30% respectively.