Analysis of participation of women in horticultural activities
This article (PDF) in the Journal of Business Management & Social Sciences Research investigates the involvement of rural women in various horticultural activities. A survey was conducted with 300 respondents of six villages of two districts of Odisha. The present study concludes that women play a significant and crucial role in production of various horticultural crops. Participation of women was higher in various production and post production activities of vegetables than of fruits and flowers. The lower participation of women in fruit cultivation activities may be due to lesser repetitive activities in fruits crops as compared to vegetables. The lower participation in flower cultivation may be due to lesser area under cultivation of flower crops in the surveyed villages. The data reveal that stubble collection, seed cleaning, seed treatments, transplanting and weeding were major farm activities which were mostly done by farm women. Women do more than half of the work of field preparation, manure application, cleaning and collection of produces, and sorting and grading in horticultural crops. While on the other hand women are not much involved in pit digging, training and pruning, planting of fruit trees, levelling of field, fertilizer application, and plant protection measures. The study also depicts that age, family income and land holding influence the participation of women in cultivation of horticultural crops, while type of family, education level and caste did not affect their participation.