Determinants of Women's Contributions to Hill Agriculture-A Study of Hill Districts of West Bengal

Women's involvement in agriculture, although varying in intensity and nature between and within regions and different farming systems, has not been acknowledged appropriately and escapes statistical enumeration. Given the physical constraints imposed by climate and topography, agriculture in the hill regions are challenging particularly for the women who showed higher work participation in comparison to their counterparts in the plains. Taking the only two hill districts of West Bengal, the present study would like to examine the determinants of women's time commitment to agriculture through field survey conducted in three villages. A multiple regression analysis revealed that the time spent by women in agriculture is determined by socio-demographic and economic factors such as age, education, marital status, occupation of household head, land holding, and the time spent by the males in agriculture. Male out migration, a characteristic of hill regions and household income were insignificant in determining the time commitments of women to agriculture.