Author(s): Dr. Lakshmi M Paloti

Abstract:
Women in rural areas suffer from many grave disadvantages and are subjected to great deal of hardship and drudgery. The jobs done by them are often physically arduous, time consuming and repetitive, resulting in fatigue and drudgery. So, women need new technologies and practices to improve upon the old ones. The transfer of technology is a very complex process. For a technology to be transferred it needs to be diffused in the social system. Both diffusion and adoption process of home science technologies go on simultaneously. Diffusion is the spread of ideas from a source to clients. Whereas, adoption signifies the decision to put on an idea into practice. The present research was carried out during 2016-17 in the purposively selected villages of Dharwad taluk of Dharwad district of Karnataka state. Eight technologies from each department of home science were selected and diffused among the social system. The total sample size was 80 rural women who have adopted the diffused home science technologies. Personal interview schedule was prepared and the data was collected. The collected data was analyzed by using suitable statistical tools. The research findings of the study revealed that maximum diffusion was observed for health and safety practices for women (31.65%). Care and storage practices of clothing was diffused to the extent of 19.27 per cent. In case of balanced diet, stain removal techniques and weaning foods the diffusion percent were 14.68, 11.47 and 10.69 per cent respectively. Low diffusion was observed in the technologies namely toys for stimulating cognitive development and boiling water and water softening methods and the diffusion percent were 7.80 and 1.83 per cent respectively. The study also observed that the categorization of adopters was made only for the two technologies namely health and safety practices for women and care and storage practices of clothing.