Mushroom Farming as a Tool for Farmwomen Leadership Impacting Empowerment

Mushroom has been identified as one of the simple, profitable and alternative livelihood sources for farm women. It is even suitable for landless women as can be cultivated indoor and small space. It has special nutritive value and known as the 'meat of the poor'. Mushroom is a good pathway for gender equality. Therefore, ICAR-CIWA introduced mushroom farming with farm women of Nima Para, Puri, Odisha. So, created community awareness and motivation, made gender sensitization, built women’s capacity, developed convergence, twisted leadership and followed collective’s approach. Subsequently, studied the impact of leadership on empowerment of women. It was found that, the women had enhanced access to credit, homesteads, inputs and institutes. There was augmented income, group cohesiveness, communication ability, mobility, decision making, etc. with women. The women had freedom to spend their earned money for children's education and marriage, own relaxation, purchasing agricultural inputs and day to day family expenditure. In addition, they were technologically empowered to various machineries and to impart mushroom training to other interested women as Master Trainers. Hence, the technology of mushroom cultivation should be promoted with a focus to leadership development among farm women.