Vol. 12, Issue 3 (2023)

Author(s):
Madhu DM, Harish Gowda, Karthick Reddy NR and Kiran GV

Abstract:
The present study aims at assessing the share of women in production and marketing of mulberry silk in Chikkaballapur district of Karnataka. The primary data was obtained from 90 sericulture farmers from six randomly selected villages and 35 silk reelers from two randomly selected blocks of Chikkaballapur district of Karnataka by conducting interviews with individual respondents. In mulberry establishment, overall farm level, women labour participation in weeding activities accounted for 21.36% of total man days, followed by mulberry planting (13.50%), and so on. In mulberry maintenance, (women employment) share of women labour was comparatively high in case of weeding with 6.96 man days (34.55%), followed by FYM application with 3.44 man days (17.08%) etc. The share of women labour was enumerated higher in case of feeding of silkworms (at different stages) with 5.02 man days (16.20%), followed by leaf harvesting with 3.83 man days (12.36%) and so on. The major utilization of women labour was found to be about 808.93 man-days (43.19%) in case of cooking with reeling of cocoons & changing water in the pans, followed by about 123.75 man days (6.60%) in cleaning and Sorting of cocoons and so on.