Empowerment of young awardee farm women of university of agricultural sciences, dharwad

Empowerment is recognized as an essential strategy to strengthen the well-being of individuals, families and communities. The present study deals with the empowerment of young awardee farm women. This study was conducted in Dharwad, Gadag and Haveri districts of Karnataka. The woman who had received Yuva shresta krishi mahile award during 2014-2017 was purposively selected. A total of 60 young awardee farm women were selected as a sample for the study from 17 talukas conferred by the UAS Dharwad. Pre- structured interview schedule was used to collect the data. Suitable statistical tools like frequency, percentage and indices were used for analysis of the data. The important findings of the study revealed that, cent per cent of the awardee farm women belonged to young age group (< 35 years) had high school education and from big family size (43.33 %) belonged to joint family (51.67 %), had medium farming experience (60.00 %) and had big land holding (38.33%). A majority of the respondents had low annual income (78.33 %), the overall empowerment of awardee farm women was to the extent of 50 per cent only. Among the various components the highest index of 70.00 was for leadership, next was production with an index of 59.09 followed by income 50.10. The lowest was for resources i.e. only 29.77 indicating that they owned resources only to the extent of 30 per cent.