Women and livestock keeping: an economic analysis

In India, about 80 per cent of the female population live in rural areas and 86 per cent of the rural women works in agriculture and allied activities. Women provide much of the unpaid family labour to agriculture including animal husbandry. Caring animals is considered as an extension of domestic activities in Indian social system, and most of the animal husbandry activities like bringing fodder from field, chaffing the fodder, preparing feed for animals, offering water to animals, protection of animals from ticks and lice, cleaning of animals and sheds, preparation of dung cakes, milking, ghee-making and marketing of produce are performed by farmwomen. On an average, females spent about 294.41 minutes and 87.20 minutes daily for large and small ruminants keeping respectively. Imputed economic value of the time spent on animal based tasks by farm women was calculated to be Rs.70.60 and Rs.21.60 per day per household in large and small ruminants keeping respectively. Landholding did not influence the time spent by farm women for large ruminant’s care in the study area but had a positive influence on the time spent by farm women on small ruminant’s care. This measure underlines the economic importance of the functions carried out by farm women in the rural economy and in livestock farming.