Women empowerment especially economic empowerment is very important as it gives security to a woman. It is very crucial for progress of the society. Women play a pivotal and potentially benefiting role in all-round growth of resource-poor farm families. But often they are neglected in decision making on farm and household matters which are mostly managed by them. Participation in decision making process especially in economic activities is an indication of empowerment. The present study attempts to investigate the level of women economic empowerment in resource-poor farm families by analyzing their extent of participation in decision making on farm and household related economic activities. The study was conducted in six agro-climatic zones of West Bengal taking a random sample of 120 resource-poor farm families. Both husband and wife of the families were personally interviewed by pretested structured interview schedule. Spearman’s rank-difference correlation was used to measure the extent of agreement between husband’s and wife’s responses. The study revealed that wives played a major role to jointly decide purchasing or hiring of land (43.33-47.50%), selling of produce (35.00-35.83%) and borrowing for agriculture (26.67-30.00%). Decisions for milking and processing of milk, utilization of dung and sale of milk and milk products were dominantly taken by wives (72.50%, 54.67% and 40.83%, respectively), where purchase and sale of animals, type and number of animals to be kept and adoption of new animal husbandry practices were mainly decided jointly (32.50-37.50%, 31.67-36.67% and 24.17-27.50%, respectively). Household economic decisions on building new house, household purchasing, education of children, selection of occupation for children and financial activities were mainly taken jointly (38.33-41.67%, 32.50-35.83%, 25.00-27.50%, 25.83-30.00% and 24.17-27.50%, respectively). The findings of the study indicate higher level of women economic empowerment in animal husbandry and household sectors

Keyword: Women economic empowerment, Resource-poor farm family, Spearman’s rank-difference correlation