Divulging the magnitude of socio-economic empowerment of dairy farm women in East District of Sikkim

Abstract

Acknowledgement of farm women as a dairy farmer is still being unrecognized. Farm women are the dominant assets of the dairy farming community. They are responsible for sustainable food and livelihood security. The study was undertaken with this regard to measure the socio-economic empowerment of dairy farm women in East district of Sikkim with sampling size of 200. The study reported that, 36.50 percent of the respondents possessed high empowerment scores, while 35.00 percent of the respondents possessed medium empowerment scores and only 28.50 percent possessed low empowerment score. There was a significant difference in the empowerment scores of socio-economic variables like, age, education, marital status, milk production per day (in lit), social status, farming experience in dairying, annual income through dairying and occupation. Young age category was having the highest empowerment scores with 81.48  1.46. Graduate and above category also possessed high empowerment scores with 87.56 1.96. In the case of social status, Other Backward Caste had high empowerment score with 81.46 . Respondents whose occupation was government service+ dairy farming possessed high empowerment scores with 89.10  2.37 while, medium annual income category had the highest empowerment scores with 76.80 . Variables like, age, education, marital status, farming experience in dairying, family size, occupation had a significant association with the empowerment score. The study suggests that, enhancement of empowerment among the farm women can be achieved by targeting the young aged, educated and married women by providing capacity building and knowledge through training on different dairy technologies.