Women worldwide play important roles in livestock keeping and provision of livestock services. However, a number of challenges face the livestock sector, including ensuring food and feed resources, and livelihood security for poor smallholder producers and processors. Women are the backbone of our agricultural work force and their involvement in livestock management is a longstanding tradition. Despite this, their earnings are generally low and they lag behind men in decision making process. Keeping this fact in mind, the present study was conducted in Godda district of Jharkhand to know the scope of empowerment of rural women in livestock sector. The data was selected with the help of random sampling. Results indicated that women involved in livestock sector were mostly illiterate, belonged to lower strata of the society and had low to medium family education status. Majority of them were involved in rearing of cattle, buffalo, goat and poultry, most of which were directly purchased from the market. Although women were mainly involved in the livestock rearing and caring, they did not have adequate knowledge about scientific management practices. Knowledge regarding diseases and their management, feed and fodder, milk product processing was found to be lower than other aspects. Majority of them were not getting any information on animal husbandry from any formal source and none of them had ever undergone any training. The results clearly indicate her involvement of women in livestock rearing and decision making process, whereas they had poor knowledge as well as access to information. Thus the potential of livestock sector for employment generation and economic empowerment can be harnessed through strategic human resource development and promotion of livestock based enterprises among rural women of the district.

Keyword: Women, Livestock sector, Empowerment ;