Women’s Ownership of Livestock Assets: Evidence from Karnataka

Livestock contributes significantly to India’s agricultural sector, and rural women supply the bulk of labour to the household livestock economy. There is, however, scarce information on women’s ownership of livestock assets. This paper examines problems of collecting data on ownership of livestock assets. It studies patterns of livestock ownership by gender, using data from the Karnataka Household Asset Survey (KHAS) 2010–11 and primary data collected from two villages of Karnataka in 2020. Women owned animals of lower value than animals owned by men. Women owned animals that were raised in the homestead and whose care could be interspersed with routine household work. Animals owned by men were generally grazed outside the compound and brought higher economic returns to the household than livestock owned by women.