Vol. 11, Issue 3 (2022)

Author(s):
Somoprava Arukha, Dr. Trupti Mohanty, Dr. Jyotirmayee Udgata and Dr. Manashi Mohanty

Abstract:
Rural women in Odisha play a significant role in agriculture and allied activities. They are actively participating in all range of agricultural activities including pre-harvesting, and post-harvesting. But despite such a huge contribution, her role has yet not been recognized and they are considered as ‘invisible farmers’. To explore their extent of participation in different activities, the current research was carried out in Puri district of Odisha state. For the present study a total of 120 rural women were selected from 4 villages of Puri district through multistage random sampling technique. Keeping in view these facts the present study has been designed to explore the extent of their role performance and factors responsible in different agricultural and allied activities in rice-based farming system. Women are always involved in post-harvest operations like winnowing, threshing, paddy parboiling, drying, and storing. Further important participated activity by the respondent is nursery raising, uprooting seeding, transplanting and weeding they are involved regularly to secure the growth of the plant Procurement of seed, bond formation, land preparation, seed treatment they are involved occasionally. Women are more involved in activities related to caring of animals and less in outdoor activities like marketing and selection of animals. There is very less involvement of women in apiary. Women are very less involved in activities related to pisciculture. Women in this area moderately participate in vermin- composting activities like tank preparation, procurement of vermin culture, compost harvesting and marketing of produce because of the time constraints. Women are moderately participating in mushroom cultivation. Less participation of rural women was found in rural craft activities in this area.