Women participation in various sericulture operations and their determinants

The paper evaluates women’s participation in various sericulture operations against their male counterparts based on survey conducted in 2017-18. A sample of270 silkworm rearers, selected randomly from three districts namely Kathua, Rajouri and Udhampur which were selected purposively based on highest number of silkworm rearers and cocoon production was taken. The binary logistic regression model was used to examine women’s involvement in sericulture and the estimates of binary logistic regression model has indicated that bed cleaning, feeding of leaves, chopping of leaves and sorting of cocoons had significantly influenced adoption of work by women in sericulture with the highest probability for bed cleaning (0.254) followed by sorting of cocoons (0.242), chopping of leaves (0.118) and feeding of leaves (0.011). The t-test with equal or unequal variances to examine the participation of men and women in different sericulture activities revealed that the average performance of females was found more in activities like separation and chopping of leaves, bed cleaning and feeding of leaves, application of bed disinfectants and harvesting of cocoons. The t-values were highly significant for all the operations. So the findings clearly indicate that the participation of females was more in indoor activities requiring soft skills while that of male’s participation was found more in outdoor activities requiring more energy. This way the sericulture enterprise helps to tap the unutilized female family labour as most of the sericulture operations are home bound which they can easily perform.