Gender Bias in Farm Activities: Evidence from Household Level Data of a Developing Economy

Abstract

Despite the fact that women remained socially subordinate to men, they participated in resource control, decision-making, and production. Yet the status of farm women, in general, is much lower than that of male counterparts largely because of the customary male dominance in the society, inherent shyness of farm women, lack of opportunities and very poor accessibility to modern technologies. The present study is an endeavor to address this issue in a traditional agrarian society, i.e. Odisha, India. The data are analyzed through descriptive statistics like mean, standard deviation, cross-tabulation, and Logit regression estimation techniques are adopted. For estimation of the aforesaid regression model, the statistical packages like SPSS 20.0 and Stata 13.0 are used. Land is mostly owned by a male person, which is basically due to hereditary reason (82.9 %). But cultural reason and to get the Government benefits are the minor factors. So far as reasons for land ownership at district level is concerned hereditary is the only reason to own the land. Factors like age, year of education and income from Primary Occupation do not improve the knowledge of parents regarding the property right of their girl children as these factors are not significant.