WOMEN‟S ROLES IN AGRICULTURAL COMMERCIALIZATION: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY IN THAKURGAON DISTRICT, BANGLADESH

Abstract

The specific purpose of the study was to determine the women‟s roles in agricultural prpduction. Attempts were also made to determine and describe the selected socioeconomic

characteristics of women and to explore the contribution of the selected determinants of women to their roles in agricultural commercialization in the study area. Thakurgaon Sadar upazila under Thakurgaon district was purposively selected from which two unions namely, Nargun and Jagonnathpur were randomly selected, a total of four villages, two from each union were selected randomly as the locale of the study. Data were obtained from 118 farm families randomly selected from total of 557 household farm families of selected villages from two unions. A structured interview schedule was used for collecting data during the period of 15 th July to 15 August, 2019. The findings of the study revealed that the majority 61.9 percent of women moderately engaged in agricultural commercialization and 28.0 percent in high involvement followed by 10.2 percent in low engagement, respectively. The study revealed that poultry rearing (90%) and livestock rearing (81%) were mainly managed by women respondents. Multiple regression analysis shows that education, farm size, market orientation, women engagement in farming and marketing problems had significant contribution to rural women‟s involvement in agricultural commercialization. The remaining characteristics of the respondents, namely age, annual family income, market distance did not show any significant contribution with their involvement. The findings revealed that an overwhelming majority (89.9 percent) of the respondents had medium to high involvement of rural women in agricultural commercialization at the study area. Therefore, the findings indicate that still there is a huge scope to increase women‟s involvement in agricultural commercialization.