A Case Study on Gender Differentiated Role Analysis in Rice Farming in a Rice Intensive Ecology

A study was conducted in Sankilo village from Cuttack district of Odisha to understand the gender issues and gender role analysis in rice farming. The village was selected after making due consultations with the households and finding the social climate relatively better in gender sensitiveness and a PRA study was undertaken by involving both male and female, key informants separately to identify major gender issues in rice farming. Daily activity clock analysis revealed that farm women got only 6 hours rest as compared to male counterparts with 7½ hours and 8 hours during wet and dry season, respectively. Farm women were found overloaded with works round the year as compared to males for 6 months during July- December. Major benefits acquired by farm women out of the involvement in rice farming were financial benefit through direct cash inflow (90%) and social recognition (86%). The results also revealed that major decision regarding the plant protection measures (100%), buying farm equipments/ machinery (93.33%), and quantity and type of fertilizers (90.00%) tends to be higher in case of men as compared to women. Almost all the farmwomen showed their interest in accessing productive resources for rice production like labour, capital, inputs, technologies etc. On the basis of this case study a 3E’s concept was developed for bringing gender equity, promoting entrepreneurship and realization of empowerment with planning for training, research and extension activities for farm women development and federating farm women into business group.