Measuring women’s empowerment in organic farming from Odisha: critical reflections on the total observed score of statement-revised scale (TOSS-R)
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the level of empowerment of rural women organic farmers through the Total Observed Score of a Statement-Revised scale (TOSS-R).
Design/methodology/approach
In doing so, exploratory factor analysis is used to investigate the factorial structure of the 8-dimensional TOSS scale. Further, first and second-order confirmatory factor analysis is used to confirm the construct reliability and model adequacy of TOSS-R. The data has been collected from 314 women organic farmers from four selected districts (Nayagarh, Khurda, Boudh, and Ganjam) of Odisha based on 2022 records from the Directorate of Horticulture.
Findings
The results showed that the TOSS-R is showing better model adequacy compared (CMIN/df = 2.031, RMSEA = 0.073, SRMR = 0.064) to the earlier TOSS scale (CMIN/df = 2.697, RMSEA = 0.840, SRMR = 0.096). Further in the analysis of the overall empowerment, the TOSS-R scale determined that 49.60% of women are highly empowered, 44.58% are moderately, and 5.73% are less empowered.
Practical implications
The study emphasizes that the policymakers should establish a local capacity to promote gender equity in land titling such that women irrigators will be officially labelled as “farmers”, thereby bringing them under government scheme that is exclusively granted to women farmers.
Originality/value
The study’s novelty lies in a more comprehensive model of determining the empowerment of women organic farmers which has the capability to determine the constraints of the women failing to be empowered in the farming sector.
Peer review
The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-09-2023-0693
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors are deeply indebted to the Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology, Deemed to be University for the tremendous support in terms of accessing information and data collection. The authors are also grateful to the rural women farmers for their voluntary participation in the data collection process. The authors are also thankful to Dr Jayasmita Kuanr for her contribution to proofreading by reviewing and correcting the language and grammar of the manuscript.
Citation
Dash, S., Priyadarshini, S., Dulla, N. and Swain, S.C. (2024), "Measuring women’s empowerment in organic farming from Odisha: critical reflections on the total observed score of statement-revised scale (TOSS-R)", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSE-09-2023-0693
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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