Impact of Women Empowerment on Livelihood Security of Farm Households in Rainfed Regions of Karnataka

Women play an important role in agriculture as agricultural labourers, farmers, farm managers and farm entrepreneurs. The income earned by women is largely used for food, children education and other household expenditure. Thus, their role in livelihood of households is immense but remains unaccounted. This paper has assessed the empowerment of farm women in terms of socio-economic status and the impact of women empowerment on livelihood security of farm households. The data were collected from Eastern and Southern Dry Zones of Karnataka and empowerment index, Spearman-Brown split half reliability test, step-wise multiple linear regression and livelihood security index were used for the study. The women empowerment has been found higher in the Eastern than Southern Dry Zone. Education, income earned by women, landholding and decision-making have been identified as the important variables influencing women empowerment. The overall values of livelihood security index for these two zones have been found as 1.399 and 0.608; these indicate that households belonging to high women-empowered irrigated situation are highly secured in terms of livelihood in the Eastern Dry Zone and Southern Dry Zone of Karnataka.