A Study on Profile Characteristics of Women and their Effect on Managing the Economy of Families in Rural Areas of Telangana

This paper focused to study the profile characteristics of women and their effect on managing the economy of families in rural areas of Telangana. The study was conducted in Karimnagar, Mancherial and Jagityal districts of Telangana which were selected purposively as there are more number of rural women involving in various agriculture and income generating activities. Further, 2 mandals were selected purposively from each district and 2 villages from each mandal were selected randomly which constitutes a total of 12 villages. An interview schedule was used to collect data from a random sample of 150 respondents through personal interview. The exploratory research design was used for the study. The results of the study revealed that majority of the women belonged to middle age group (58.67%), general caste (39.33%) and were illiterate (34.67%). Most of the respondents were married (79.34%) and chose to have a nuclear family (62.00%) with medium family size of 4 to 6 members (60.67%). Majority of the women chose agriculture as main occupation (78.00%) having small land holdings (40.00%), medium farming experience (61.33%), women having major ownership of the land (39.33%), medium annual income (64.67%), partial control over family income (52.67%), full control over self income (57.33%). Most of the women had membership in one (34.00%) and in two organization (34.00%), medium information seeking behavior (57.34%), medium mass media exposure (58.00%), medium extension contact (58.00%), medium economic motivation (80.67%), medium scientific orientation (65.34%), medium risk orientation (57.33%) and medium socio-economic status (66.00%). They had good exposure to mass media and updated themselves with latest information through extension personnel’s. Majority of the women are ready to take risk and practice new technology in their fields.