Decision Making Ability of Women Entrepreneurs Involved in Dairy Farming   

Empowerment of women is fundamental for the progress of the country. Women play an important role in the socio-economic development of the country and in India they play a dual role. Women of the present day has extended her foot in every sphere and excelled through the same. They have broken the boundaries restricted to the house-hold work and the prejudice that women are homemaker and that they cannot compete with men. Women have increased their participation in economic activities especially in dairy farming activity as a as manager, decision makers and skilled workers. Therefore the study was planned to assess the decision making ability of the women entrepreneurs involved in dairy farming. This study was conducted in Mathura district of Uttar Pradesh and a total of 120 women respondents were selected for study. Decision making ability of the respondents in dairy enterprise was studied under six subheads feeding, viz., breeding and management, health care, marketing and processing and miscellaneous activities. The response was collected by using a pretested structured interview schedule. The result shows that majority of respondents had decision making ability in feeding practices i.e., 68.18 per cent, 52.71 involved in breeding practices, 60.08 per cent involve in management practices, 57.92 per cent involved in health care, 61.46 per cent involved in marketing practices, 42.33 per cent involved in miscellaneous practices as insurance of dairy animals, advantage of dairy schemes etc. Though much of work of dairy farming is carried out by women but extension efforts and capacity building programmes are not generally designed for greater involvement of women and extending benefits to them. Therefore training module for scientific dairy farming can be formulated especially for women to improve their efficiency.