Empowerment of Landless Rural Women through Income Generating Activities under SAIP of DAE

The major objectives of this study were- to assess the extent of empowerment of landless rural women through income generating activities under Smallholder Agricultural Improvement Project (SAIP) of Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) and to explore relationships of the women’s selected characteristics with their empowerment. The study was conducted with the landless women of Sirta union under Sadar upazila of Mymensingh district. Data were collected from a sample of randomly selected 100 landless women from a population of 210. Empowerment of a respondent was measured by considering four dimensions: a) participation in decision making, b) mobility, c) participation in social and political activities and d) access to credit and resources. The overall empowerment score of a landless woman was obtained by summing up her scores of dependent variables. Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r) was computed to explore relationship of the women’s individual characteristics with their empowerment. A pre-tested interview schedule was used to collect data from the landless women, which took place from 10 September to 30 September, 2006. The majority (76%) of the women beneficiaries had low level of empowerment while 5% had very low empowerment and only 19% had medium empowerment. Among the eight independent variables, six variables namely age, education, participation in income generating activities, communication media exposure, credit received and training received had significant positive relationship with women’s empowerment while family size and family annual income did not show significant relationship with their empowerment.