Livelihood diversification pursued by rural women farmer: The case of Bangladesh

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to determine the extent and nature of livelihood diversification of the rural women and also to explore relationships of 13 selected characteristics of the rural women with their Livelihood diversification. The study was conducted at Bakergonj upazilla of Barishal district. There were a total of 1200 rural women farmers in the 5 villages constituted the population of the study, out of which 10 percent of the total rural women farmers were selected through simple random technique for retrieving the overall idea about livelihood diversification. This gave a sample size of 120 farmers. Data were collected by the researchers themselves with the help of pre-tested interview schedule during 20 September 2012 to 30 October 2012. Findings of the study indicated that the livelihood diversification scores of the respondents ranged from 0.2 to 0.78 with average being 0.41. It is found that more than half of the (54.2 percent) of the farmers had medium level of livelihood diversification compared to 18 percent having low livelihood diversification and 27.5 percent had high livelihood. Out of 13 selected characteristics of the rural women seven of those viz. education, family education, income generating experience, household annual income, communication exposure, organizational participation, attitude towards livelihood diversification had positive significant relationship with livelihood diversification.