Women empowerment in agriculture: A case study of village Kangoo in Hamirpur district of Himachal Pradesh

Women empowerment plays a very important role in the agricultural growth particularly in developing countries; however the nature and extent of women's role in farming vary from region to region, culture to culture and even from crop to crop. The role of women in agriculture cannot be belittled but irony is that the barriers to empowerment such as credit, access to inputs, extension services, land ownership rights etc limit their production and they face persistent obstacles and economic constraints limiting further inclusion in agriculture. The present study was attempted to assess the level of women empowerment in agriculture; further the differences in women empowerment with respect to age, marital status and education of the women in women empowerment have also been investigated. The respondents in the present study were 121 women of village Kangoo of Hamirpur district of Himachal Pradesh. The findings showed that the mean value range was between 3 to 4 for all the components of women empowerment indicating higher agreement with the same and implying higher empowerment of women in agriculture in the study area. The effect of demographic variables on women empowerment yielded mixed results pointing to the significant mean difference for few components of women empowerment.