The Empowerment of Rural Women through Homestead Poultry Rearing in Bangladesh

This paper attempts to identify the empowerment factors of rural women through homestead poultry rearing in Bangladesh. To identify the empowerment factors, 75 rural women involved in poultry rearing practices were interviewed with a structured questionnaire. Factor analysis has been performed to identify the empowerment factors. Multiple regression analysis was used to identify the relationships between the empowerment factors and the overall empowerment of the rural women. Results show that the homestead poultry rearing practice empowers rural women through decreased husband's influence on wives, increased independence for spending money, increased self-decision making authority, increased involvement in family affairs, increased control over the poultry business and increased importance in the family. The results also show that there is a significant relationship between the empowerment factors and the overall empowerment of rural women. This study suggests that the higher the level of self-decision making authority and increased involvement in family affairs, the higher the level of empowerment will likely be