A Sociological Study about the Need of Agricultural Extension Services For Rural Women in Tehsil Dera Ghazi Khan-Pakistan

Agricultural extension services transfer new technologies from research and other sources to the farmers for enhancing the production that ultimately contributes to alleviate poverty. Rural women play a key role in agricultural sector and its productivity. The current study was undertaken to identify the need of rural women for agricultural extension services, investigate the problems faced by rural women during agricultural activities and identify the role of extension workers in the development of agriculture in rural areas. Multistage sampling technique was applied to select 160 respondents. The data were collected through well designed interviewing schedule and analyzed throughSPSS. The results indicated that most (43.1%) of the respondents belonged to the age group between 25 to34 years and majority (93.1%) were illiterate. Large proportions (85.6%) of the respondents were married and most of the respondents (46.9%) were living in nuclear family type. About 31.9% of the respondents had less than Rs, 10,000 incomes. Husband/care taker as well as most of the respondents (38.3%) were involved in farming. About 86.3% of respondents were involve in crop level activities and 45.6% of the  respondents took part in fertilizers and about 51.9% of the respondents were involved in sowing activities, 6.3% of the respondents said that they were involved in seed preparation and 43.8% of the respondents took part in  breeding and fodder chopping while 46.3% of respondents reported that they were not provided educational facilities and  44.4%  faced lack of technical knowledge about agricultural information methodology. Highly significant association was found between education and problems of female farmers.