Women in Dairying

7/29/2019 Women in Dairying

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Women in Dairying

Winner of the prestigious Magsaysay Award, Mrs. Ela Bhatt, highlights the needfor giving women their due place in dairy development. For their empowermentand economic well-being, women's access to training in modern dairying andcooperative management is essential.

The employment of women is an index of their economic and social status insociety. In India, women constitute 90 per cent of marginal workers, with someregional variations. The Operation Flood (OF) program recognizes that:

Dairying at the household level is largely the domain of women

The products and income from dairying can be controlled by women

Dairying can be practiced on a small scale.

The prevailing dairy scenario presents many dilemmas.

The first one is that modern dairying is geared to maximum production asopposed to traditional subsistence dairying.

The second is that an expanding national herd of milch and other animals isdependent on diminishing and degrading common property resources for grazingand crop residues and other biomass.

The third is traditional dairying is largely dominated by men. All these have to beresolved within the framework of sustainable development.
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The membership in most of Indias 70,000 village-level dairy cooperativesocieties (DCS) is heavily dominated by men. The picture is now graduallychanging in the favor of women. Efforts are on to give them their due place indairy development.

Presently, some 2,476 all-woman DCS are functioning in the country in selectedStates. Out of 9.2 million total membership in DCS, 1.63 million are women (18per cent). However, women constitute less than three per cent of total boardmembers.

Factors that inhibit the success of women

The poor rural households need a whole package of supporting inputs and

services to develop dairying as an effective instrument of household livelihood.However, as the experience goes, these inputs are not always easily accessibleto poor, rural women. Major factors that hamper the success of womenscooperatives are:

Resistance to women as cooperative members; women are yet to be recognizedas farmers in their own right. In a mixed cooperative, lack of ownership of landprevents women not

only from becoming member but also from obtaining credit, training, technicalassistance. Women also do not have any say in the decision making policies of

the cooperatives and thus cannot help formulate more policies to helpthemselves. Concrete strategies have to be devised to help women getownership and control over productive assets, individually and collectively. It willbe the single most important factor towards their empowerment and economicwell-being. Some of these assets include a plot of land, housing, workshed,animals and shareholding of cooperatives.

Low literacy

Resistance from the upper socio-economic section of village community towardsthe poor.

Access to finance (lack of) : Small-farm household women need timely finance(credit) for short-term investments to manage their dairy enterprises in anefficient manner. For example, they cannot meet the needs of cattle feed, fodderand other essential inputs without ready cash. Facilities should also be madeavailable for timely breeding of dairy animals and health care. A World Bank
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study of the OF project benefits in villages of Madhya Pradesh suggests that thelack of credit for the initial purchase of dairy animals remains a major constraintto OFs ability to reach the poorest households.

Access to training facilities (lack of) : Women should be imparted training indairy husbandry, cooperative management and marketing. There is also aneed for social organization at the pre-cooperative stage to help in theformation of cooperatives as well as dissemination of the economics ofdairy activity

SEWA: Empowering women

NGOs have played a leading role in cooperativizing the women milk producers.They also assist in making the benefits of Government schemes available to poormilk producers. To name a few: The Andhra Pradesh Dairy Womens Program,the Bhagavathula Charitable Trusts Womens Dairy Program and SEWAsWomens Dairy Cooperatives.

National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) has initiated a special trainingprogram for women . More than 860,000 women have participated in thiseducational program. Still, most women producers do not always have access totraining in modern livestock management.

SEWA is an organization of 158,000 women workers in Gujarat in western India.Its experience in the arid zone of Banaskantha district has shown that among themany inputs, fodder is the key to milk production. This could also become part ofthe larger program of ecological restoration. All the defunct primary societies inRadhanpur and Santhalpur talukas of the district were revived, strengthened andconsolidated.

A fodder security system - Women take charge!!

To make dairying a significant source of income, it is realized that a FodderSecurity System would have to be developed. This would provide nutrition tomilch cattle, increase their milk yield and thereby the producers income andstabilize the migrating households to receive benefits from the socio-economicinfrastructure.
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Women in Dairying