Quantification of the Contribution of Rural Women in Socioeconomic Development

Abstract

In Bangladesh, rural women contribute in social development and they are good partners to economic development too. However, their contribution to the socioeconomic development by spending time in various ways has not been quantified yet. The study aimed to quantify the extent of contribution of rural women in socioeconomic development at two villages named Sachibunia and Islamnagar of Batiaghata upazila under Khulna District of Bangladesh. Data were collected from purposively selected 120 respondents using a structured interview schedule on 14 selected characteristics of the respondents which were treated as independent variables. The extent of contribution to socioeconomic development was the dependent variable. Spearman’s rank order correlation co-efficient (ρ) was computed to ascertain the relationships between the selected characteristics and dependent variable. Rural women’s performed different daily activities and spent time for those activities were converted into money. Through this way, the obtained quantified contribution to family income of the unemployed respondent was 26% and of employed respondent was 50%. Quantified contribution to family income by educated paid respondent was 48% and by highly educated paid respondent was 60%. Quantified contribution to family income by low educated unpaid respondent was 29% and by highly educated unpaid respondent was 23%. The average quantified contribution to family income made by rural women was 53.32% which had been ultimately used for better standards of living. Negative significant relationship was found between the faced problems and their contributions in socioeconomic development. Family is the smallest constituting unit of the society and the country as well. Thus, it could be concluded that the contribution made by women in socioeconomic development is more than its men counterpart at rural level. It might be recommended that, adequate support should be provided to rural women to nurture this contribution by ensuring due acknowledgement and honor for them.