The present study examines the performance of female traders in marketing of vegetables, fruits and flowers in rural markets of North 24 Parganas district in West Bengal in the context of women participation, employment, earnings and their economic empowerment by using modern method of Stochastic Frontier Analysis.  The results show that trading of horticultural products, especially flowers trading provides women a source of earnings and there is a huge potentiality to absorb female labour force in this trading sector. The study interestingly observed a new marketing channel followed by the female traders in addition to the existing varied common and larger market channels: Collection from Common Pool Resources (CPRs) – Retailers- Consumers. The length (no. of steps) of marketing channel is directly proportional to the consumer price and inversely proportional to the market margins of the vendors. The direct and shortest marketing channel from farmers to consumers is rare in the study area. The persistent of larger length of marketing channels in horticulture may be due to the geographical scatterings of markets and the long distance from production areas to consumption areas. The longer channels meet the demand for value-added services and it is beneficial to the distant small and marginal producer farmers, even if for large farmers also, to sale their products timely and it has potentiality to absorb unorganized labour force. There is a significant variation in price spread, market margins and marketing efficiency within and between vegetables, fruits and flowers trading. The rate of market margins varies across commodities but, on an average, it is estimated to be lower for wholesalers as compared to retailers which may be attributed by their volume of transactions. On an average, the producers (farmers) share in consumers’ price is observed to be lower in case of flowers (52.3 percent) than that of in vegetables (62.4 percent). The mean efficiency score of women retailers in earnings from trading of horticultural products is estimated to be 0.739 which implies that there is a scope of increase in income of women traders to the extent of 26 per cent with the existing marketing resources in their hand and at the prevailing socio-economic and market structures. The amount of initial working capital, commodity combinations in the selling basket, scale of business, transport cost, experiences of vendors, co-operation from family members, young age of female vendors, location of the market and the distance from home are the important variables for differential performance of women retailers in horticultural marketing.

KEYWORDS: Horticultural Markets, Women Traders, Market Margins, Frontier Analysis.

JEL Classifications: Q13, O35, R12, R15.