Socio-Economic Improvement of Women: An Impact Evaluation of Women's Involvement with Integrated Farming Systems in Bangladesh

Socio-economic improvement of rural people especially women is one of the challenges in Bangladesh. While integrated farming system is the potential area of working opportunity of the women to improve their socio-economic conditions. Considering this issue, this paper was to examine the improvement of socio-economic status of women with increased participation in so-called “Integrated Farming Systems (IFS)”. Using a structured interview methodology, 100 women in the REGION involved with IFS practices were surveyed. Descriptive statistics and student’s t-test were used to analyze and interpret the collected data. A significant improvement of different socio-economic indicators like income, food consumption, housing, source of drinking water, sanitation, family asset, education and access to health facilities’ of women have found due to farming system involvement. This improvement may be significantly influenced to reduce the rural poverty and this finding might be good example for another region. Less extension contact by SAAOs of DAE regarding involvement with integrated farming system was the most severe problem while non-cooperation of family members was the least problem of involvement with integrated farming system. These results may provide policy makers and development service providers with important insight, which can be used for sound policy generations for better women’s socioeconomic improvement.