The main purpose of the study was to determine the participation of char women in income generating activities (IGAs) for a sustainable livelihood. Moreover, characteristics of respondent women and relationships between selected characteristics of the respondents with their extent of participation in IGAs were also found out. The fieldwork for the study was carried out in two Upazila (administrative unit) of Jamalpur district in Bangladesh during November 2006 to March 2007. Data for the study were collected from 200 randomly selected char women by using interview schedule. Out of five major aspects of IGAs, majority (39.36%) of the char women were involved in homestead vegetable production. The highest proportion (95.5%) of the respondents in the study area had low participation of income generating activities compared to 4.5% having medium participation and nobody of the respondents had high participation in income generating activities to make their livelihood sustainable. Majority of char women were middle aged; can sign only; small family size; marginal farmer; low to medium income; low social participation, agricultural knowledge, organizational participation, cosmopoliteness and extension contact; and no innovativeness category. The relationships between the variables were tested by computing the co-efficient of correlation. Social participation, agricultural knowledge, organizational participation, innovativeness, cosmopoliteness, and extension contact of char women had positively correlated with their extent of participation in IGAs for sustainable livelihood. Age, education, family size, farm size and annual income showed no relationship with their participation in IGAs.
