Women’s Participation in Small-Scale Dairy Farming for Poverty Reduction at Gadaipur Union Under Paikgacha Upazila of Khulna District

Abstract: The present study focuses on the participation of rural women in small-scale dairy farming activities as a means to reduce poverty in rural areas. This study was carried out in two villages at Paikgacha upazila in the Khulna district, Bangladesh. From each village data were collected from 25 rural women involved in dairy farming practices through direct interviews using interview scheduler to ascertain the role and participation of rural women in dairy farming during 27^th May to 20^th June. The socio-personal study revealed that majority of the women were middle aged (66%) in joint families (68%) with (82%) being literates. Maximum respondent families were marginal farmers (44%) followed by small farmers (42%) with high annual family income (62 %) having dairy (100 %) as the major occupation. About 25 operations of dairy farming were selected in consultation with experts and were broadly categorized into six aspects as economic, feeding, breeding, livestock management, health care, purchasing, processing and marketing activities. The study revealed that women participation was maximum in watering to livestock, cleaning of animal sheds, chopping of straw, care of new born calves, management of calves. The farm women participation was least in farm record maintenance, feeding of urea treated straw, artificial insemination (AI) practice, purchasing of feeds and fodder. They were not getting loans or credits from the banks and the NGOs. Majority (82%) of the respondents had no organizational participation. All (100%) respondents had low extension contact with majority (58%) of them were low cosmopoliteness having no (100%) training but they had high knowledge (100%) about dairying activities. Among fourteen selected characteristics of the respondents only age and knowledge had shown positive significance with participation of women in dairy farming activities with (30.5%) contribution to the total income returned from these activities with increased happiness, improved education and improved housing condition which had as the poverty reduction indicators.

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