Women Farmers’ Access to and Control Over Farming Resources and their Role in Decision Making Process in the Rural Areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan
Women Farmers’ Access to and Control Over Farming Resources and their Role in Decision Making Process in the Rural Areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan
Mehnaz Safdar1, Urooba Pervaiz1* and Dawood Jan2
ABSTRACT
The current research was intended to investigate the access and control over farm input resources by the women farmer and their involvement in decision making in rural areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP)-Pakistan. Three districts namely Bannu, Swabi and Swat from KP were purposively selected and a sample size of 384 women farmers were selected through multistage sampling technique. Descriptive analysis revealed that 305 women farmers were involved in rearing poultry. A 5 point Likert scale was used, showed that women farmers had various constraints out of which Pardah, mobility and lack of information source were ranked on top with Likert score value of 4.12, 4.00 and 3.94, respectively. Due to male dominant society, 62.8% of the decisions were taken by spouse. Results of Chi-square analysis showed a significant association for age and decision making which means with increasing age of the women, their involvement in decision making increases, majority of the rural women were either not taking interest or not given the opportunity of decision making process of farming and family matters. Rural women have less access to farm inputs and less income generating opportunities. It is concluded that non-availability of timely technical knowledge and extension services, low family income, less access to farm inputs and inadequate income generating opportunities were the major constraints. Women farmers should be given easy and quick opportunity to open bank account, credit facilities and agriculture inputs and extension services.
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