- Women have extensive work loads with dual responsibility for farm and household production.
- Women's work is getting harder and more time-consuming due to ecological degradation and changing agricultural technologies and practices.
- Women have an active role and extensive involvement in livestock production, forest resource use and fishery processing.
- Women contribute considerably to household income through farm and nonfarm activities as well as through work as landless agricultural labourers.
- Women's work as family labour is underestimated.
- Industries which employ more women than men are Bidi making and match manufacturing, cotton textiles, cotton spinning, cashew nut processing, tobacco stemming and drying, canning, preserving and fish processing.
- the nature and extent of women’s involvement differs with the variations in agro-production systems.
- The mode of female participation in agricultural production varies with the land-owning status of farm households.
- The role of women ranges from managers to landless labourers.
- In overall farm production, women's average contribution is estimated at 55% to 66% of the total labour with percentages much higher in certain regions.
Characteristics of Women Agricultural Labourers
Agricultural labourers, especially in smaller villages away from towns and cities, are generally unskilled workers carrying on agricultural operation in the centuries old traditional wages. Most agricultural workers belong to the depressed classes, which have been neglected for ages. The low caste and depressed classes have been socially handicapped and they never had the courage to assert themselves. In some parts of India, agricultural labourers are migratory, moving in search of jobs at the time of harvesting. The number of agricultural labourers being very large and skills they possess being meager, there is generally more than abundant supply of agricultural labourers in relation to demand for them. It is only during the sowing and harvesting seasons that there appears to be near full employment in the case of agricultural labourers. But, once the harvesting season is over, majority of agricultural workers will be jobless especially in areas, where there is single cropping pattern. Due to all the above mentioned factors, the bargaining power and position of agricultural labourers in India is very weak. In fact, quite a large number of them are in the grip of village money lenders, landlords and commission agents, often the same person functioning in all the three capacities.
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