DAIRY FARMING AT GAFFARGAON THANA, IN MYMENSING DISTRICT: ROLE OF WOMEN

Abstract

In Bangladesh rural women play a significant rule in animal husbandry and allied fields. There are some 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 extend of involvement of farm women and other family members in the decision making in relation to feeding, management, health care.

For the study, a multistage sampling is considered and by which 30 farm women were taken having some conditions fulfilled. Questionnaires were prepared for easy collection of necessary information.

From the information obtained, it was observed that mostly housewives (76.7%) contribute in dairyng but most of them (73.3%) are belongs to 20-40age. Their predominant religion is Islam (64%). Most of them were primarily educated (30%), having <1 acre land (30%), lived in mixed type of houses (40%) with a family having family member less than 5 (63.33%).

From the collected data it was found that the overall contributions of women is greater than men in dairying on the study area. It was also observed that in decision making, regarding health care (39.16%) and feeding (33.32%) women had highest participation, while in breeding and management practices their participation were 25.55% & 32.72% respectively. Besides, in case of hygiene maintaining, watering, milking, milk selling, manure disposal and vaccination women had their participation of about 46.66%, 23.33%, 36.66%, 16.66%, 16.66% and 30% respectively.