Measuring women’s empowerment in organic farming from Odisha: critical reflections on the total observed score of statement-revised scale (TOSS-R)

Purpose - This study aims to investigate the level of empowerment of rural women organic farmers through the Total Observed Score of a Statement-Revised scale (TOSS-R). Design/methodology/approach - In doing so, exploratory factor analysis is used to investigate the factorial structure of the 8-dimensional TOSS scale. Further, first and second-order confirmatory factor analysis is used to confirm the construct reliability and model adequacy of TOSS-R. The data has been collected from 314 women organic farmers from four selected districts (Nayagarh, Khurda, Boudh, and Ganjam) of Odisha based on 2022 records from the Directorate of Horticulture. Findings - The results showed that the TOSS-R is showing better model adequacy compared (CMIN/df = 2.031, RMSEA = 0.073, SRMR = 0.064) to the earlier TOSS scale (CMIN/df = 2.697, RMSEA = 0.840, SRMR = 0.096). Further in the analysis of the overall empowerment, the TOSS-R scale determined that 49.60% of women are highly empowered, 44.58% are moderately, and 5.73% are less empowered. Practical implications - The study emphasizes that the policymakers should establish a local capacity to promote gender equity in land titling such that women irrigators will be officially labelled as “farmers”, thereby bringing them under government scheme that is exclusively granted to women farmers. Originality/value - The study’s novelty lies in a more comprehensive model of determining the empowerment of women organic farmers which has the capability to determine the constraints of the women failing to be empowered in the farming sector. Peer review - The peer review history for this article is available at:https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-09-2023-0693