Women in Agriculture

Lesson 19 : Women & Poverty

Reasons of Women’s Poverty

Women contribute considerably to household income through farm and non-farm activities as well as through work as agricultural labourers. Women’s work as family labour is underestimated and mostly unnoticed.

• Gendered deprivation and inequalities
• Gender-based division of labour within the domestic spheres
• Women headed households are necessarily poorer and suffer from vulnerabilities when compared with those of men-headed households.
• The stereotypical household responsibilities constrain their availability for paid work
• In some households where cultural norms and taboos prevent public participation of women as wage earners in the labour market
• market jobs are also gendered in ways that result in discrimination against women in terms of they have not been adequately recognized in agricultural development, land reform, or rural industrialization, employment and wage returns.
• Women’s contribution to the family’s earnings goes unrecognized
• The access of village women to regular employment remains at the low end, although moving from 3 per cent to 4 per cent over the decade.
• Casual labour as the only livelihood resort for most of the poor women.
• Rural women poverty is an outcome of socio-economic and political inequalities as well as the process of marginalisation. Landlessness, or poor access to land and economic resources, low returns from agriculture especially for the land poor who operate with scanty investments, inadequate avenues for remunerative employment; social exclusion and lack of political voice are a few of the prominent factors explaining women poverty in rural areas.