How have Rural Women Self-Empowered through Agricultural Trades?Some Reflections from Karnataka

Abstract

Agricultural entrepreneurial trades have been playing a commendable role in empowering the rural women economically and socially. Besides providing employment and additional household income, these trades have been facilitating the women traders to enhance their social status both at homes and in the society. This research has captured how the agricultural trades of women entrepreneurs have been sustained over the years in rural environment. Also, it identified various backward and forward linkages of the entrepreneurial trades with selected parameters like self-employment, income generation, social status of the women, etc. The paper has brought to the fore a number of major supply failures of the public policy as well as demand side constraints and offered policy options for the effective and sustainable rural women entrepreneurial trades.