Gender issues and technological refinement for women in rice farming

Abstract

A study was conducted in Cuttack district of Odisha to identify the gender issues in rice-based production systems and institute a comparison between men and women in rice farming with respect to participation, knowledge, evaluation of technology, varietal preference and perception on rice production for family requirement. The results revealed that all the traditional technologies were easily available, affordable, easy to use, not highly skilled and socially acceptable. On the aspects of efficiency, majority of the women perceived the traditional technologies viz., manual transplanting, manual weeding and harvesting by traditional sickles and parboiling in traditional way were not efficient. The results of on-farm trial revealed that the highest net return (Rs. 25,880 ha-1) and benefit: cost ratio (2.30) were recorded in the plots where the crop was established by transplanter and mechanical weeding by operating finger weeder (20 days after planting) followed by manual removal of weeds within rows. The feedback provided by the women farmers about CRRI two-row manual rice transplanter and finger weeder has led to draw useful recommendations for refinement in farm implements.