Abstract

Since early years of the 20th century, feminism has built a body of theory and in recent decades’ women empowerment has been suggested as a mechanism to improve the quality of women’s work as well as their personal lives. The empowerment of women is an essential precondition for the elimination of world poverty and the upholding of human rights. Women are about half of the population of Pakistan, they are active participants in every walk of life. But women participation as extension workers was discouraged in agriculture sector, extension wing due to field work nature of this job as it was considered as male oriented job only. Later on, during the last years of the first decade of this century the hiring of female extension workers by the Department of Agriculture (Extension and Adaptive Research) Government of the Punjab, Pakistan become a possibility. The study was conducted at Institute of Agri. Extension and Rural Development, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Punjab, Pakistan during 2018-19. All the female agriculture officials working in agriculture extension, livestock and poultry sectors were the population of the study. In first step through proportionate stratified sampling technique 49 respondents from agriculture extension, 64 from livestock and 17 respondents from poultry sector were taken forming a sample size of 130 respondents. In second step, the respondents were randomly selected from each stratum. The data were collected from selected respondents through pretested interview schedule. The quantitative data and qualitative data were analyzed, and the data revealed that most of the respondents belonged to middle age group having master’s degree and 1-3-year experience, half of the respondents were married with non-farming background. The major social constraints faced by the respondents in the field were identified as: male dominance, non-acceptance (unrecognition) as working lady, family responsibilities and harassment issues.