DECISION MAKING ABILITY OF RURAL WOMEN IN VEGETABLES PRODUCTION

Abstract

Decision-making plays a vital role in agriculture enterprise, where women's high involvement is necessary and their participation in decision-making process is an important segment of each and every household. The research examines the extent of decision making ability of rural women in vegetables production and to explore the relationship of the selected characteristics of the rural women to their decision making ability in vegetables production. Five villages of Jatrapur union under Bagerhat Sadar upazilla of Bagerhat District was the locale of the study. Data were collected from 116 women vegetable cultivators from 04 April, 2017 to 03 May, 2017. Descriptive statistics and Pearson’s Product Moment Coefficient of Correlation (r) were used for analysis. The highest proportion (62.1 %) of the respondent had medium decision making ability in vegetables production compared to 19.8% and 18.1% women had high and low decision making ability respectively in vegetables production. Among the variables, education, area under vegetable production, annual family income, benefit cost ratio (BCR), attitude towards vegetable cultivation, time spent in vegetable management, knowledge on vegetable cultivation of the rural women had significant positive relationship with their decision making ability in vegetables production. It was also found that most of the women (65.5%) faced medium constraints in decision making and the lowest proportion (12.9 %) of the women faced high constraints in decision making during vegetable cultivation. As woman play an important role in all sphere, they should be encouraged more and provided space in decision making regarding vegetable production.