Time Budgeting and Rural Women Participation in Livestock Management of Sindh

Abstract

The rural women take a part in livestock management and household activities regularly. Despite of that their contributions are undervalued. Agricultural and livestock activities are the most important source of income for rural households in Pakistan. In 2016- 17 livestock contributed 58.33 per cent of the overall agricultural contribution to Pakistan’s GDP. The rural women actively participate in the crop production from the sowing to the harvesting of major crops like wheat, cotton, rice and sugarcane and the allied fields of the agriculture sector like livestock management. Majority of rural women involved in livestock activities such as cleaning animal sheds, feeding of animals, caring of animals, gathering dung, preparing milking products and market activities such as ghee, eggs milk, butter along with the household chores. However they spent some time on leisure activities. This study was conducted to explore rural women’s time framework in livestock management in terms of work structure in rural areas of Sindh. A multi-stage sampling was used to collect the information from the sampling size of 323 women respondents. Data was collected with a combination of quantitative & qualitative data with the help of interview, questioner participant observation, focus group discussion, analyzed using descriptive statistics and correlation analysis. The study shows that the female respondents spent more than 50 percent of their time on the above activities out of which on average livestock management occupies more than 5 hours in a day, whereas, proportionately marketing activities comprise less than one hour.